Will the Ranking Change in the Telecom Operators' 5G Quality 'Second Report Card'?

Ministry of Science and ICT Announcement Imminent
Key Question: Has Communication Quality Improved Compared to the First Half?

[Asia Economy Reporter Koo Chae-eun] As the government's second report card on 5G communication quality, which had many complaints such as "poor connectivity and frequent disconnections," is imminent, the three major telecom companies have entered tension mode. Although they succeeded in commercializing 5G for the first time in the world last April, the controversy over quality has continued due to the slow nationwide network construction.

In this second half evaluation, the measurement areas have expanded, and since each company has aggressively increased facility investments, a more accurate quality assessment is expected. Since the three telecom companies' network headquarters have put their lives on the line and renewed their efforts after the first (first half) evaluation results were released in August, attention is focused on whether there will be changes in rankings.

Announcement Imminent... Will There Be Ranking Changes?

According to the industry on the 23rd, the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency (NIA) will announce the results of the "2020 Second Half 5G Quality Evaluation" as early as this month. Although November was initially considered, the evaluation was delayed due to the resurgence of COVID-19, making it later than expected. The communication quality evaluation has been conducted since 2007 under the Telecommunications Business Act (Article 56) to provide users with communication quality information and to induce quality improvements from operators. Since rankings are assigned by operator, competition is fierce, reminiscent of a "Three Kingdoms blood battle."

Above all, the key issue is whether SK Telecom will maintain its "reputation" as the number one operator in 5G speed, and how much KT and LG Uplus have improved their 5G average speed and LTE handover rate (the rate at which 5G switches to LTE when 5G is not available). In the first half quality evaluation, SK Telecom ranked first in 5G download speed across all regions, and KT was rated number one in LTE handover rate quality.

However, SK Telecom was relatively weak in 5G connection time (the time taken to successfully connect), and KT ranked second behind SK Telecom in both 5G download and upload speeds, so how much they have improved these areas is of interest. In particular, attention is focused on whether LG Uplus, which ranked lowest in both speed and LTE handover rate, will overturn the situation. LG Uplus expressed confidence that the second half would be better, stating that some equipment manufacturers' software upgrades were not completed during the first half survey.

Improvement in Average Speed Is Key

It is also important how much the three telecom companies have improved their 5G average speeds compared to the first half. In the August survey, the 5G speed of the three mobile carriers was only 656 Mbps (average download speed), which is 3 to 4 times the LTE speed, leading to criticism that they might have made "false exaggerated advertisements." The three carriers have promoted that 5G is up to 20 times faster than LTE.

However, this time the evaluation measurement targets included not only Seoul and six major metropolitan cities (Incheon, Busan, Daejeon, Daegu, Gwangju, Ulsan) but also 85 major administrative districts outdoors, indoors, and areas with dense floating populations, so it is unlikely that speeds will improve dramatically. This is because many areas are still in the "work in progress" stage rather than having optimized network construction. Above all, since the 28 GHz band frequency has not yet been commercialized, meaningful speed improvements are unlikely. An industry official said, "The (20 times faster) speed appears when all technologies are mature and applied," adding, "LTE's theoretical maximum speed is 1 Gbps, but it was 50 Mbps in 2013 and 158.53 Mbps last year."

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT, as of the end of October, the number of 5G subscribers was 9,984,000, and it is estimated that the number has effectively exceeded 10 million as of December. By carrier, as of October, 5G subscribers were counted as SK Telecom 4,608,315, KT 3,039,859, and LG Uplus 2,331,928. However, due to the burden of frequency reallocation fees and pressure to lower rates, the scale of network investment has not increased in proportion to the growth rate of 5G subscribers. The total 5G network facility investment guidance presented by the three telecom companies this year is 8.4 trillion won, which is 400 billion won (5%) less than the facility investment amount of 8.8 trillion won a year ago.

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