Starting this year, government assessments of the quality of 5G communication services in indoor facilities will be significantly strengthened.

The Ministry of Science and ICT (Minister Lee Jong-ho) recently announced the 2024 plan to inspect areas where telecommunication services are available and conduct quality assessments.

The inspection and quality evaluation of areas where communication services are available is a system implemented to promote the improvement of communication service quality and provide users with reliable information on communication service quality.

The evaluation began in 1999 and has expanded the services evaluated in line with the evolution of communication methods such as 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE. From 2020, evaluations are being conducted on 5G, LTE, 3G, WiFi, and wired Internet.

In 2024, with the goal of improving the quality of 5G communication services in indoor facilities, 160 locations, or 40% of the 5G service evaluation samples (400 locations), will be allocated to indoor facility evaluation to focus on inspecting the quality of 5G services indoors.

In addition, considering that buildings where telecommunications companies have not installed 5G wireless stations (base stations, repeaters, etc.) inside the building are likely to have poor indoor communication quality, when selecting facilities to be evaluated, we plan to focus on selecting facilities without indoor 5G wireless stations.

Areas with insufficient 5G/LTE quality and facilities with insufficient 5G access identified in the previous year's evaluation results will be re-examined to see whether quality has been improved and the results will be announced in August.

In the 2023 evaluation, areas with insufficient 5G quality were identified as follows: 13 LG U+ locations, 10 SK Telecom locations, and 9 KT locations, and facilities with insufficient 5G access were identified as follows: 28 KT locations, 17 SK Telecom locations, and 15 LG U+ locations.

In addition, in order to promote the improvement of 5G service quality in rural areas, the number of evaluation areas for the rural 5G joint network, which was piloted in 2023, will be expanded from 30 in 2023 to 45 towns and counties in 2024, while inspections of rural 5G availability areas will also be newly conducted starting this year.

In order to activate the 'user continuous evaluation' in which telecommunication users voluntarily participate in the evaluation of telecommunication quality, the Korea Intelligence Information Society Agency is also discussing with the three telecommunication companies a plan to apply a no-charge policy to data usage when using the speed measurement app (NIA 'Wireless Internet Speed Measurement') provided.

Currently, only LG U+ users are not charged for data usage of the app, but if an agreement is reached, it will be applied to the three telecommunication companies as well as budget phone users.Even for the brave, no-paying system is applied, so it is expected that constant user evaluation will become more active.

Kim Kyung-man, director general of the Ministry of Science and ICT’s telecommunications policy division, said, “This year, we will significantly strengthen the 5G quality evaluation of indoor facilities and encourage telecommunications companies to actively invest in improving indoor quality.”