In 2024, the three main mobile carriers in South Korea saw an average 9.2% increase in 5G transmission speed over the previous year, which greatly improved the 5G service network’s quality.
On December 30, the National Information Society Agency (NIA) and the Ministry of Science and ICT released the “2024 Communication Service Coverage Inspection and Quality Evaluation” report, which emphasised this trend.
KT led the way in 5G transmission speed in key cities with the biggest number of communication service users, including Seoul and six other metropolitan areas. In contrast, SK Telecom was the quickest in the country, including in rural and small-to-medium-sized cities.
The three main carriers’ average 5G transmission speed was 1025.52 Mbps, which represented a significant improvement above the 939.14 Mbps reported the year before. When analysing the performance per carrier, KT recorded a 5G transmission speed of 1055.75 Mbps, LG U+ reached 956.26 Mbps, and SK Telecom recorded a 5G transmission speed of 1064.54 Mbps.
The speed difference between the top and second-ranked carriers has decreased due to KT’s notable rise of 106.87Mbps, even though SK Telecom boosted its speed by 77.00Mbps from the previous year. The average 5G download speed in major cities, broken down by city size, increased from 1035.46Mbps to 1121.54Mbps last year.
The average speed in small and medium-sized cities was 1101.53 Mbps, up from 962.07 Mbps the previous year.
The average speed in rural regions was 645.70 Mbps, which was higher than 607.86 Mbps the previous year. There is still a divide between major cities and rural areas, even though the distance between major cities and small and medium-sized cities has greatly decreased. With an average 5G download speed of 1152.75 Mbps in major cities, KT overtook SK Telecom, which had been leading the field with 1151.26 Mbps.
Third place went to LG U+ with 1060.61Mbps. Notably, the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association (KTOA) revealed last November that the three major carriers’ 5G download rates (1025.52Mbps) are more than three times quicker than those of seven major foreign nations. Compared to Norway, which had the fastest speed of the seven countries (584.14Mbps), it is around 1.8 times quicker.
However, this year’s LTE service transmission speed was 178.05Mbps, a tiny drop of 0.49% from the previous year’s 178.93Mbps. The download speeds by carrier were LG U+ 128.85 Mbps, KT 166.81 Mbps, and SK Telecom 238.49 Mbps.
The download speeds by city size were 119.96 Mbps in rural areas, 214.64 Mbps in big cities, and 201.97 Mbps in small and medium-sized cities. Commercial (carrier subscriber-only) Wi-Fi recorded 374.89 Mbps, open (accessible to other carriers) Wi-Fi recorded 415.02 Mbps, and public (public place-only) Wi-Fi recorded 463.55 Mbps.
Wi-Fi transmission speeds were also assessed. At 540.67 Mbps, LG U+ had the fastest public Wi-Fi transmission speed of the three main carriers.
The Ministry of Science and ICT’s Communication Policy Officer, Lee Do-kyu, underlined the importance of this assessment by saying: “This evaluation is significant as it is the first quality evaluation announced in the year when the nationwide 5G network was completed.”
Continuing, he said: “As the quality gap between indoor shadow areas and rural areas has been confirmed, continuous investment by carriers is necessary.
“We will continue to induce qualitative advancement of communication services such as 5G and improve the system so that the quality evaluation results can be felt by users,” he added.
