Korea's 5G Speed Increases by 100Mbps in Half a Year... Ranks 2nd Worldwide

[Asia Economy Reporter Joselgina] Despite controversies surrounding 5G services such as high pricing plans and coverage, it has been revealed that the average 5G speed in Korea has steadily improved, increasing by 100Mbps in just half a year. However, it is still far from the initially expected "20 times faster than LTE" speed at the time of commercialization.

According to a survey conducted by the UK market research firm Opensignal on 5G services in 15 countries worldwide from July to September this year, Korea's average 5G speed recorded 336.1Mbps. This is 112.1Mbps faster than the survey conducted from January to March this year (224Mbps). Although it lagged behind Saudi Arabia (377.2Mbps), which ranked first globally, the gap narrowed from the previous 67.2Mbps to 41.1Mbps.

Korea's 5G speed falls far short of the expected level at the time of commercialization. According to the 5G quality evaluation by the Ministry of Science and ICT in August, the average 5G download speed of the three major telecom operators was about four times faster than LTE. This is far below the theoretical expectation of 20 times faster speed.

However, when comparing 5G speeds worldwide, Korea ranks second after Saudi Arabia. In this survey, the countries ranked 3rd to 10th were Australia, Taiwan, Spain, Kuwait, Italy, Thailand, and Switzerland, in that order. Their average 5G speeds ranged from 165.6 to 215.8Mbps.

The United States, which competed with Korea for the first commercialization of 5G, recorded the lowest average speed (52Mbps) among the surveyed countries. However, Verizon, which commercialized the ultra-high frequency 28GHz band, recorded the fastest average 5G speed of 494.7Mbps among all surveyed countries and operators. Opensignal explained, "The overall average speed was low because US operators such as T-Mobile and AT&T used the 600~850MHz frequency, which is slower than the 3.5GHz band."

Korea also achieved an improved score in 5G service availability, increasing by more than 6 percentage points compared to the previous survey. Availability refers to the proportion of network connection time in the places people use most frequently, regardless of the network's service coverage. The ranking of 5G availability by country was led by Saudi Arabia at 37%, followed by Kuwait at 27.7%, Thailand at 24.9%, Hong Kong at 22.9%, Korea at 22.2%, and the United States at 21.4%.

However, despite these quality improvements, there is still a long way to go to reach the initially expected maximum speed of 20Gbps. This is partly due to the characteristics of 5G frequencies, which require more base station equipment than LTE. Due to differences in deployment methods, nationwide 5G network construction requires more than twice the number of devices compared to LTE, and existing equipment cannot be reused.

An industry insider said, "Although investments in base stations were made as much as during LTE commercialization, operators face significant difficulties because they cannot utilize existing infrastructure at all." Some also express frustration that the current 5G speed is being evaluated against LTE speeds. Considering that LTE could use 2G networks and that the current LTE quality is essentially the result of 25 years of development, they argue the comparison is unfair.