Public Wi-Fi on all city buses across South Korea transitioned to 5G

On 5 December 2023, the Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) held an event at the National Palace Museum of Korea to commemorate the complete transition of the public Wi-Fi that is installed on all 29,100 city buses nationwide from the previous LTE to 5G.

At the event – which was attended by the Minister of Science and ICT of Korea Lee Jong Ho, representatives from the telecommunications industry and public Wi-Fi users – achievements in public Wi-Fi infrastructure so far were reviewed, and future policy directions for public Wi-Fi to continue providing high-quality services were announced. 

Through this transition, it is anticipated that city bus users will be able to enjoy various internet services more conveniently even on the move, with the four-fold improvement of the Wi-Fi speed.

In addition, public Wi-Fi is anticipated to contribute to cost savings on communication expenses by providing free data access, as it is deployed in a total of 58,000 public areas, including 4,400 new deployments in 2023. 

Such initiatives regarding the public Wi-Fi infrastructure, which began in 2012, are estimated to have provided 66 petabytes (equivalent to 57.96 million HD videos) of data to 9.2 billion individual users cumulatively in the year 2022 alone.

Moreover, equipment employed to provide public Wi-Fi is required to complete the security certification procedure from accredited certification and testing institutes, and Opportunistic Wireless Encryption (OWE) technology is utilised to encrypt user data. Overall, the public Wi-Fi infrastructure ensures high-quality and secure internet connection service to users. 

During the event, Minister Lee Jong Ho took a look at public Wi-Fi equipment installed at the National Palace Museum, boarded an intra-city bus and made video calls with students and young citizens. After experiencing 5G-based public Wi-Fi service himself, the Minister listened to user experiences and suggestions coming from those on the bus. 

Furthermore, MSIT announced its future policy directions for public Wi-Fi, with four key directions: application of new technologies; improvement of interoperation system for commercial Wi-Fi; reallocation of public Wi-Fi resources; and reinforcement of the management and response functions for everyday operation and emergency mitigation.