#Office worker Kim Mo (33) recently experienced strange phenomena at home. When the refrigerator motor was making a 'hum' sound, the TV screen would shake or occasionally turn black. Sometimes, the Wi-Fi router signal was also interrupted. Kim said, "After replacing the broken consolidation cable (HDMI), surprisingly, the problem was resolved."#
With the advancement of Internet of Things (IoT) technology, devices such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and washing machines communicate with each other. Invisible signals are intertwined even within homes. As the factors causing interference gradually increase, errors that are difficult to identify, like those experienced by Kim, are appearing.
LG Uplus has viewed addressing even these 'unidentified error' cases as part of its 'fundamental quality.' On the 17th, I visited the LG Uplus 'Daejeon R&D Center' located in Yuseong-gu, Daejeon. Throughout the center, the company's pursuit of quality was evident. Various home products released by LG Uplus, including set-top boxes, Wi-Fi routers, and IoT devices, were undergoing quality tests in 'extreme environments' 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
◇ Apartment space transformed into a 'test lab' for repeated product validation
LG Uplus established a 'home wireless environment test lab' within its R&D center to prevent cases of 'unknown device malfunctions' from occurring in its products. The space, designed to replicate a 25-pyeong (approximately 826 square foot) apartment, is filled with 78 types of electronic devices, including smart appliances, laptops, smartphones, and set-top boxes. Furniture has also been added to simulate the actual environment in which customers use home products.
LG Uplus verifies the performance and stability of newly developed devices in this space. Basic performance measurements such as speed and communication range, as well as connectivity tests with various IoT devices, are conducted. Only products that pass these tests meet customers.
The country's first Wi-Fi 7 router supporting the 6 gigahertz (GHz) band was also able to be released only after passing quality evaluation here. The evidence that the Wi-Fi 7 router introduced by LG Uplus last month provides 'up to four times faster speed than existing Wi-Fi 6 routers' also emerged from this test lab.
Released products also undergo testing. Tests reflect various conditions, such as ▲ Wi-Fi connectivity of smart appliances ▲ high-capacity traffic caused by online video service (OTT) viewing or video conferencing ▲ dual network configurations due to the use of private routers. A representative from LG Uplus noted, "Problems discovered in the home wireless environment test lab are being promptly improved to prevent customer inconvenience."
◇ Repeated testing using scenarios reflecting customer behavior
In addition to the home wireless environment test lab, LG Uplus has also established a 'device software (SW) scenario test lab' and a 'network (NW) integration test lab' at its R&D center. Various products offered by LG Uplus that are serviced within homes undergo validation tests at each stage of the process.
In the device software scenario test lab, 411 units of 10 types of LG Uplus set-top boxes currently being supplied to the market were powered on. The screen, divided into 16 sections, continuously cycled through broadcasting channels and repeatedly showed access to and exit from the OTT platform. LG Uplus conducts up to 5,000 tests on set-top boxes daily, totaling about 2 million tests throughout the year.
The intention is to capture potential errors through repeated testing of seven major operational scenarios based on user data accumulated over the years in business. Issues such as overheating or speed degradation that may occur during prolonged use are also under analysis.
Errors identified during this process are corrected 'before the customer experiences them.' A representative from LG Uplus explained, "There was a case where we confirmed that interruptions occurred while watching video-on-demand (VOD) content during certain times and improved the cache structure to resolve it."
In the NW integration test lab, verification is conducted on devices that play important roles in service provision but are not visible to customers. Internet supply devices within apartment complexes are usually hidden from view, and if errors arise from these devices, many customers could be affected, indicating that quality control is crucial.
The company tests various equipment, including set-top boxes, routers, and network devices, in the NW integration test lab, creating 'extreme environments' to assess the interactions between devices. This helps verify what errors may occur with devices that supply signals at the apartment complex level (L2, L3). They preemptively addressed network issues that could have affected around 160,000 customers in 2024.
Kang Bong-soo, head of LG Uplus's Quality Innovation Center (executive director), stated, "I believe that preventing inconveniences that customers may experience in advance is true quality innovation," adding that, "We will continue to focus on improving service quality using artificial intelligence (AI) and provide differentiated customer experiences."