On Nov. 15, the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association released a report on the result of a recent survey regarding telecom services available in the United States, Canada, Germany, France and Spain. The survey was conducted between Oct. 11 and 18, and answered by the press, consumers in general, scholars and civic organizations.
According to the result, Canada recorded the highest average LTE data transmission speed, 25 Mbps for downloading and 9.8 Mbps for uploading. It was Germany that ranked at the bottom with average download and upload speeds of 13.1 Mbps and 2.8 Mbps, respectively.
The five countries were found to have a lot of blind spots, such as subways and the underground sections of buildings, whereas the number of such spots is very small in Korea.
In addition, these countries were applying higher telephone rates than Korea to consumers in their respective countries. For example, the rates in the U.S. and Canada were about twice that of Korea for every call plan. Although France’s and Spain’s rates for cheaper calling plans were close to those in Korea, the data service charges in the two countries showed a significant increase as the amount of provided wireless data went up. The North American and European countries were found to have no option for unlimited mobile data usage, either.