“GGachion,” a new wireless access point (AP), is installed for trial service in Seoul on Sept. 9, 2020. The Seoul city government introduced the system in order to raise the speed of the public Wi-Fi service by four times. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Sept. 14 (Korea Bizwire) — The South Korean government has launched an initiative to improve the quality of public Wi-Fi service.
To this end, the government plans to set up new public Wi-Fi base stations at 10,000 locations throughout the country by the end of this year, as well as to improve the quality of 18,000 existing Wi-Fi base stations that are now outdated.
The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on Friday that it held a briefing session for the public Wi-Fi connection quality improvement project in the presence of officials from the nation’s 16 metropolitan city and provincial governments.
Under this plan, the country’s three major carriers — SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. — will be in charge of improving the quality of outdated Wi-Fi equipment.
KT will be responsible for the establishment of new high-quality Wi-Fi infrastructure.
During the briefing session, the nation’s three major telecom operators shared their views on the direction of the project in detail with the 16 metropolitan city and provincial government and discussed how to complete the project by the end of this year.
The telecom operators formulated a plan to secure the latest wireless local area network (WLAN) standard ‘Wi-Fi 6’ equipment by early November, as well as to complete the installation of the new equipment by year’s end.
KT will make use of the employees from its network division and six regional headquarters to complete the installation of 10,000 new Wi-Fi base stations throughout the country.
In the meantime, the outdated Wi-Fi quality improvement project will begin with field inspection and advance construction from October.
In efforts to complete the project by the end of this year, the ministry and the 16 metropolitan city and provincial governments will continue to ramp up cooperation, including joint checkups on the project’s progress.
M. H. Lee (mhlee@koreabizwire.com)
