SK Telecom announced on the 4th that the download speed has improved by 1.5 times according to the interim inspection results of its pilot service introducing 'Wi-Fi 7' on city buses.
This pilot service is part of the public bus Wi-Fi project overseen by the National Information Society Agency (NIA), which is under the Ministry of Science and ICT. It was established to enhance the quality of public Wi-Fi services by applying Wi-Fi 7 equipment based on 5G and LTE communication.
SK Telecom began the pilot service targeting a total of 100 vehicles, including main and branch city buses and express buses, in the Seoul and Gyeonggi areas last May and plans to continue it until the end of this month.
According to SK Telecom, the interim inspection results of the pilot service showed an average download speed of 715-1000 Mbps, which is about 1.5 times higher than the average download speed of 429 Mbps when 'Wi-Fi 6/6E' equipment was first applied.
The average usage per device increased by 20-30%. A comparison of buses equipped with Wi-Fi 6/6E and Wi-Fi 7 on the same route over the month of May indicated that the average usage per vehicle was 279,979 MB for May with Wi-Fi 6/6E and 365,211 MB for Wi-Fi 7.
'Wi-Fi 7' is faster and has lower latency compared to the existing Wi-Fi 6/6E. Additionally, the wider bandwidth allows for a greater amount of data to be processed at once. It also offers enhanced technology in terms of stability and security.