79 of 87 Areas with Poor Telecom Quality or Connectivity Improved

[Financial News] More than 90% of the telecom quality in domestic indoor facilities and subway areas that were found to have slow transmission speeds or weak radio signal strength has improved compared with before the survey.
According to the 2025 telecom service quality assessment released on the 30th by the Ministry of Science and ICT and the National Information Society Agency (NIA), a follow-up review of quality improvements at 87 locations identified as having slow transmission speeds or weak radio signal strength found that 79 had improved, while 8 still fell short.
MSIT focused its inspections on indoor facilities and subway areas with poor quality. For high-speed rail sections where infrastructure investment is underway using shared network 2.0 technology, the ministry plans to conduct inspections at the end of this year, once the investment work is completed.
By inspection type, all 30 indoor facilities improved, including 24 5G facilities with poor connectivity and 6 LTE areas with poor quality.
The average download speed rose from 33.61 megabits per second before the improvements to 99.34 Mbps afterward, marking a 196% increase and a sharp improvement in quality.
In subway inspections, 12 of the 13 5G problem sections, or 92%, improved, while one section remained unimproved. Of the 13 problem sections, all nine sections served by each carrier's standalone network were improved, but one of the four 5G shared-use sections was still not fixed.
For LTE, 37 of the 44 problem sections, or 84%, improved, but 7 sections still need work. Measurements showed that average 5G download speed rose from 354.34 Mbps before the improvements to 661.54 Mbps afterward, an increase of about 87%. Average LTE download speed also improved from 52.84 Mbps to 118.98 Mbps, up about 125%.
MSIT and the country's three mobile carriers plan to complete improvements before the Chuseok holiday in key sections of the Gyeongbu and Honam high-speed rail lines that saw many poor-performing stretches in last year's quality assessment. The sections with the highest passenger traffic include PyeongtaekJije Station-Daejeon, Daejeon-Miryang, Dongdaegu-Ulsan Metropolitan City, Osong-Iksan, and Iksan-Jeonju. The carriers also plan to complete shared network 2.0 facilities on the remaining Gyeongbu and Honam Line sections in the second half of the year.
For the high-speed rail sections excluded from this inspection, the ministry said it will closely monitor the degree of improvement, taking the shared network 2.0 rollout schedule into account.
MSIT said that telecom operators' infrastructure investment is essential to creating a high-quality communications environment that people can actually feel in daily life. It plans to actively encourage such investment through continuous quality assessments and follow-up inspections of underperforming areas.
In particular, the ministry plans to conduct stricter inspections in the second-half quality assessment of the eight subway sections and the high-speed rail sections on the Gyeongbu and Honam lines that have still not improved, in order to verify whether real progress has been made.
[email protected] Jang Min-kwon Reporter