Ministry of Science and ICT Strengthens Communication Service Quality Evaluation... Expands to Rural and Fishing Villages

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 27th that it will strengthen the evaluation of 5G services in this year's telecommunications service quality assessment to promote improvements in communication service quality experienced by users and to encourage increased investment.

To expand the wide and dense coverage of 5G services nationwide, the quality evaluation target areas will be extended to include rural shared network regions. Accordingly, in addition to the existing evaluation target areas covering all administrative districts of 85 cities nationwide and major towns and townships, quality assessments will be actively conducted in rural shared network areas as well. The rural shared network is scheduled to commercialize 5G services in the first half of this year.

To improve indoor perceived quality and resolve coverage shadows, random samples of all buildings within 5G coverage will be selected to check 5G connectivity availability and measure quality. To improve the quality of subways with many 5G users and provide various quality information, quality measurements will be conducted on some metropolitan area subway lines with high passenger volumes during both commuting and non-peak hours, and the results will be disclosed.

The Ministry of Science and ICT will also re-examine areas with poor quality that were disclosed during last year's evaluation results announcement to encourage telecommunications companies to promptly improve 5G quality. Although LTE services are still used by the majority of the population (46.21 million lines), considering ongoing quality complaints, strict evaluations will be conducted nationwide, including urban and rural areas and vulnerable regions (such as islands, mountain trails, and coastal roads). Quality in some outdoor and subway sections identified as poor quality areas last year will also be re-measured to encourage telecommunications companies to improve and manage LTE quality.

For both 5G and LTE services, since there are 'speed-controlled unlimited plans' that allow unlimited data use at limited speeds after the basic data allowance is exhausted, compliance with the data speed limit standards of these plans will be newly inspected. Through continuous user evaluations, promotion of the user speed measurement app (NIA SPEED) will be strengthened so that 5G and LTE users can directly measure communication quality reflecting various communication environments.

Regarding internet services, continuous user evaluations and quality monitoring will be conducted to maintain the quality management of wired internet. The telecommunications service quality assessment results will be disclosed in August as an interim report on areas with poor 5G and LTE quality to improve communication quality levels. To promote nationwide 5G network expansion and provide users with quality information, more detailed measurements and analyses will be conducted, and the final results will be announced in the latter part of the fourth quarter.