The Ministry of Information and Communication said Thursday that it will evaluate the quality of 14 Internet services from seven companies: Korea Telecom (KT), Hanaro Telecom, LG Powercom, Tbroad, C& M, CJ Cablenet and HCN.
The test begins in October and the result will be announced no later than March, the ministry said.
More than 90 percent of households in South Korea are connected to one or more broadband Internet lines, but few had certified data for the actual capacity of the lines. The ministry said the evaluation will press the firms to improve their network quality and customer service.
``Broadband Internet has growing importance in people's everyday life with various online services such as e-trading, e-mail, Internet banking and e-government becoming widely used,'' said Hyung Tae-geun, a member of the Korea Communications Commission, in a press briefing.
The ministry is to invite 2,800 home Internet users from eight major cities and provinces including Seoul, Incheon, Busan and Daejeon. Data downloading and uploading speed will be measured between the participants' PCs and the government's main Internet traffic control server every 15 minutes for one week. The accumulated data then will be analyzed in statistical methods.
In addition to the mechanical data, some 9,000 people will be asked to participate in a telephone survey to make an objective assessment on the services they use, the ministry said.
Many Internet users have complained that the service providers are exaggerating the speed of their network lines and do not properly compensate for service interruption.
``Light-speed'' and ``100 Megabits'' are two of the most frequently used parlances in promotions though most of the firms do not actually guarantee such qualities. In theory, a 100-megabits-per-second line should be able to download a two-hour DVD-quality movie file in about two minutes, which in practice is hardly achieved at home.
Numbers show that consumers are not satisfied with the gap between the advertised performance and the actual speed. Of 18,605 complaints from telecommunication service users filed to the ministry between January and May, 8,312 cases were about broadband Internet services, compared to the 7,353 cases on mobile phone services.
Korea is not the first country to adopt government-initiated network evaluation programs. The United States, Britain, Australia and Singapore test the quality of their mobile and fixed-line phone services or broadband Internet services more than once a year.
Autor(en)/Author(s): Cho Jin-seo
Quelle/Source: The Korea Times, 20.09.2007
