5G is eating into Wi-Fi traffic

With the commercialization of 5G and the increase in 5G users, the total wireless data traffic has accelerated, but data shows that Wi-Fi traffic has declined.

On March 2, 2020, South Korea announced its total wireless traffic data for January 2020, exceeding 600,000TB for the first time, reaching 608,323TB, of which 4G and 5G data traffic were 463,118TB and 131,241TB respectively, but Wi-Fi traffic was only 13,826TB, accounting for only 2.27% of the total wireless traffic.

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The statistics from the Ministry of Science and ICT of South Korea show that in January this year, the average traffic per person of South Korean 5G users was 27.1GB, which is three times that of 4G users (8.52GB).

Since Wi-Fi is shared, it is impossible to calculate the per capita traffic, but in terms of total traffic, South Korea's total Wi-Fi traffic in December last year was 15,110GB, which means that the total Wi-Fi traffic in January decreased by 8.5% from the previous month.

There are two possible reasons for the decline in Wi-Fi traffic:

One reason is that after 5G commercialization, some users no longer use Wi-Fi frequently, especially users of 5G high data traffic packages and unlimited traffic packages.

At present, the 5G charges of South Korea's three major operators are roughly as follows: 8-9GB of data traffic per month costs 50,000 won (about RMB 292), 150-200GB of data traffic per month costs about 70,000 won (about RMB 409), and unlimited traffic packages require a monthly payment of more than 80,000 won (about RMB 468).

Second, the speed and stability of Wi-Fi are far lower than those of 5G, which leads to its gradual marginalization.

To this end, Korean industry insiders have called for increased investment in Wi-Fi construction and the active introduction of the new generation of Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 6E that are more suitable for high-definition video streaming and high-speed wireless communications, in order to improve Wi-Fi wireless performance and reduce users' communication cost burden.

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According to statistics released by the Ministry of Science and ICT of South Korea, as of the end of January, the number of 5G users in South Korea has approached 5 million. Among them, SKT has 2,215,522 5G users, accounting for 44.68%; KT has 1,507,190 5G users, accounting for 30.39%; LG U+ has 1,235,500 5G users, accounting for 24.91%.