Preparing for Chuseok Holiday Traffic Surge... Three Major Telecom Companies' Focused Management

Expected 'Untact' Chuseok
Surge in Media and Content Consumption Anticipated
Three Major Telecoms Respond with Base Station Expansion

[Asia Economy Reporter Koo Chae-eun] Ahead of the Chuseok holiday, the three major telecom companies have begun network management to prepare for a surge in traffic. Especially this year, due to the spread of the novel coronavirus disease (COVID-19), it is expected that people will spend more time at home, prompting telecom companies to make thorough preparations such as expanding base station capacity in areas with dense floating populations.

SK Telecom plans to operate a comprehensive control center by deploying a total of about 5,600 SK Telecom and ICT family company specialists by the 4th of this month, monitoring communication status 24/7 and responding swiftly on-site.

In particular, due to the spread of COVID-19, instead of visiting their hometowns, people are expected to send regards to distant family members via group video calls or increase media usage, so SK Telecom has inspected wireless traffic and expanded capacity. Quality optimization work and additional 5G equipment have been deployed targeting rest areas near highways and terminals where vehicle congestion is heaviest.

KT has completed pre-inspections of wireless quality at major highways, national roads, rest areas, airports, KTX and SRT stations, and terminals where outbound and inbound travelers gather. Especially, KT has selected about 1,300 locations nationwide, including multi-use facilities such as department stores and shopping malls expected to be crowded during the holiday, as focused monitoring targets, managing 5G, LTE, and 3G quality intensively. KT has strengthened media traffic monitoring in preparation for increased real-time broadcasting and VOD viewing on Olleh TV and Season, and completed data throughput expansion and load balancing. Additionally, KT will reinforce a 24-hour monitoring system during the holiday and maintain an emergency recovery system.

LG Uplus has established and is implementing a 'Holiday Special Communication Plan.' To enable emergency response even in critical situations, a comprehensive control center has been opened at the Magok building for 24-hour focused monitoring. 5G and LTE base stations located nationwide at highways, rest areas, SRT and KTX stations, bus terminals, and airports, where network traffic is expected to increase, have been pre-inspected to measure quality, and based on this, optimization work such as expansion of switches and base stations has been completed. On-site personnel have been increased at important key locations, maintaining a constant readiness for dispatch. By analyzing the annual trends of call volume and data usage during holidays, LG Uplus plans to actively protect customers even at major highway toll gates, rest areas, and habitual congestion zones.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.