Ministry of Science and ICT: "5G 28GHz Abandoned by Korea, Focused Investment by US and Japan"

Government Partially Discloses August Public-Private Working Group Field Survey
US Verizon "Plans to Deploy 45,000 5G 28GHz Base Stations Within the Year"
Japan NTT Docomo "Increasing Base Stations Faster Than Usage Plans"

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] The three major telecom companies recently received notifications such as frequency allocation cancellations due to negligence in the obligation to build 5G 28GHz base stations, while the US telecom company Verizon is reportedly planning to build 45,000 millimeter-wave base stations by the end of this year. Japan's NTT Docomo also stated that it is increasing millimeter-wave base stations faster than originally planned for the allocated frequency usage.

The Ministry of Science and ICT disclosed on the 23rd some of the findings and meeting contents regarding the status of ultra-high frequency (mmWave) base station construction identified during an overseas field survey conducted by a public-private working group formed in August.

According to the government, US-based Verizon plans to build 45,000 millimeter-wave base stations this year and expand this over the next four years. Brian Mecum, Verizon's Senior Vice President, stated in a meeting with the Korean government, "We plan to build 45,000 base stations in 2022 and expand over the next four years." As of March, Verizon had built 33,000 base stations.

In the US, telecom companies, manufacturers, and experts within the working group measured millimeter-wave performance. The results showed an average speed of 1.66 Gbps using mobile measurement methods, and fixed measurement speeds of 3.56 Gbps (10m), 2.49 Gbps (20m), 2.53 Gbps (50m), and 2.42 Gbps (100m). The Ministry of Science and ICT noted, "There were no disagreements regarding the measurement methods or results."

The Ministry also cited data from Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, reporting that the four major Japanese telecom companies had built more than 20,000 millimeter-wave base stations as of July. It explained that over 10 types of devices supporting the 28GHz band are available in Japan, including Samsung Electronics' Galaxy S22, Galaxy Z Flip4, Galaxy Z Fold4, and Sony's Xperia Pro. NTT Docomo, a Japanese telecom company, also responded that it is building millimeter-wave base stations faster than its frequency usage plan.

The Ministry of Science and ICT mentioned that Qualcomm's data presented at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2022 and the Strategy Analytics (SA) 5G smartphone forecast report indicate that more than 50 manufacturers worldwide have released over 150 types of millimeter-wave supported devices. In terms of smartphone units, over 61 million units had been distributed by last year.

The attention on overseas cases is to assess whether the Ministry of Science and ICT's frequency allocation cancellation was appropriate. When announcing the results of the compliance inspection procedure for the allocation conditions imposed during the 2018 5G frequency allocation last week, the Ministry pointed out that the domestic 28GHz band ecosystem, which is less mature compared to overseas, could be problematic ahead of the 6G era. It also judged that domestic telecom companies have less willingness to activate the service due to cost issues, despite active consumer-to-business (B2C) services being conducted in advanced countries such as the US and Japan.

The government maintains the principled stance that the decision to cancel frequency allocation was because the three telecom companies did not fulfill the allocation conditions. Looking at the 28GHz network construction status of the three telecom companies, a total of 5,059 base stations have been built. SK Telecom built 1,605 (10.7%), KT built 1,586 (10.6%), and LG Uplus built 1,868 (12.5%). The number of base stations built by the three telecom companies is at the 10% level compared to the obligation (15,000 base stations).

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