Intra-city buses in South Korea now offer faster fifth-generation (5G) Wi-Fi, following an improvement from the existing long-term evolution (LTE) service.

According to the Ministry of Science and ICT on Tuesday, a project to convert public Wi-Fi on 29,100 city buses across the country to 5G from existing long-term evolution (LTE) was completed in November.

As a result, the Wi-Fi speed on buses is now faster by more than four times to 300 to 400 megabits per second.

The public Wi-Fi service for buses, organized by the Science Ministry and the National Information Society Agency, began in May 2019. The first-phase project to switch public bus Wi-Fi to 5G was led by mobile carrier KT Corp., and second and third phases by the nation’s leading mobile carrier SK telecom Co.

Minister of Science and ICT Lee Jong-ho met with telecommunications company officials and public Wi-Fi users at the National Palace Museum of Korea in Jongno District, Seoul on Tuesday and examined the results of public Wi-Fi construction and announced future policy directions.

The old Wi-Fi 4 and 5 built between 2015 and 2017, which has outlived its durability life of seven years, will be replaced by Wi-Fi 7 in 2025. Those suffering failures and are inconvenient to use will be replaced with Wi-Fi 7 from 2024 on a pilot basis.

The Wi-Fi 7, a new Wi-Fi standard that is 2.4 times faster than Wi-Fi 6, is expected to be completed next year, with related access point (AP) products to be launched then. High-bandwidth networks will be actively introduced, such as by bringing up the speed of the Wi-Fi-based wired network to 10 gigabit per second.

Efforts to enhance efficiency will also take place. Public Wi-Fi APs that are barely used due to facility shutdowns will be relocated to places with more users, such as libraries and traditional markets.

By Kang Bong-jin and Choi Jieun

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