Are Seoul's plans for citywide free Wi-Fi necessary?
When you visit South Korea's capital in 2017, you can expect to hop onto free Wi-Fi in public spaces, including subway trains and buses.
That's what the government promised this week, as part of a broader 460.5 billion won ($372.5 million) digital plan to get its people and businesses more connected.
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But South Koreans are already pretty darn connected -- the home of Samsung has the fourth highest smartphone penetration rate in the world, with nearly four out of five people across the country owning a smartphone, according to industry data from mid-2015.
That's country-wide, across 50 million people. For Seoul's 10 million residents, you can safely bet that penetration rate is way higher.
And without having to hop onto Wi-Fi, cellular broadband speeds are absolutely blazing. In 2014, the country's telcos started launching their LTE-Advanced networks, an upgrade of the 4G LTE that most big cities rely on now. LTE-A clocks in at twice the speed of LTE, at a theoretical 225 Mbps. That means you can download a DVD-quality movie in about half a minute.
Phone plans aren't pricey, either. According to reports, most phone bills come in at about KRW 60,000 ($48) per month.
Free Wi-Fi in other cities mostly used by tourists
This plan in Seoul isn't new. The city has been working on rolling out free Wi-Fi since 2011.
But when you look at other developed cities that have municipal Wi-Fi, you get recurring reports of the locals not really tapping into the government's generosity. One big reason is that most people already subscribe to generous data plans, and don't need to piggybank on Wi-Fi for everyday use.
This is the story in Helsinki, according to Quartz, where the Finnish capital's superfast public Wi-Fi network is likely more used by tourists than locals.
In Singapore, a city with very similar smartphone and 4G take-up rates as Seoul, the government's free Wi-Fi started rolling out way back in 2007. It's never publicly disclosed usage rates, but anecdotal evidence on local forums points to most residents using their data plans or tethering their laptops to their phones.
The free Wi-Fi service, branded "Wireless@SG" has also attracted criticism over the years for not keeping up with modern speeds and loads. In the transport authority's recent announcement to install free Wi-Fi at subway stations, it pointed to the 2 Mbps speed guideline for Wireless@SG, saying it plans to keep to that. For reference, the average cellular speed in Singapore was 16.2 Mbps in 2015, according to Ookla data.
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There's further data to support that Singaporeans are relying heavily on their data plans. Official numbers show mobile data usage steadily tracking up, aided by prices coming down for data plans.
Seoul's efforts to step up its Wi-Fi gift to the country may ultimately fly past the heads of most locals, but it will probably benefit visitors to the popular destination. As Helsinki's IT head was quoted saying, free Wi-Fi in the city is a form of goodwill to both visitors and residents.
This can only continue to benefit the "bandwidth capital of the world".
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Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
