Communication networks are often understood as immaterial flows—continuous, invisible, and detached from the physical world. This project challenges that assumption by showing how signal is shaped by, and entangled with, terrain, infrastructure, and socio-economic conditions.

The presentation will introduce a QGIS-based workflow that approaches telecommunication networks as spatial fields rather than abstract coverage. Using South Korea as a case study, multiple layers—including elevation (DEM), existing cell tower locations, population density, and proximity to maintenance and environmental resources—are brought together. Through viewshed analysis and multi-criteria mapping, these layers are combined to show how signal distribution is conditioned by geomorphology, access, and infrastructural logic.

Instead of treating signal as uniform, the research demonstrates how it is unevenly produced. Mountain ranges, urban density, and infrastructural clustering generate patterns of amplification and attenuation, creating differentiated zones of visibility and access. What appears continuous at the network level becomes highly variable when understood spatially.

This framework is then extended to the level of the user. Network performance is not only shaped by physical infrastructure, but also by economic structures embedded in mobile data plans. Different pricing tiers offer varying speeds, priorities, and levels of service, meaning that the same location can produce different experiences of connectivity. By relating infrastructural conditions to these tiers, the workflow begins to map how signal is not only distributed across space, but also stratified across users.

Coming from a design and architecture background, my research approaches QGIS not only as an analytical tool but as a way to make invisible systems legible. The goal is to visualize relationships that are typically treated as disconnected: between signal and terrain, infrastructure and population, and network access and economic differentiation, forming a basis for targeted spatial interventions and more informed infrastructure planning.

The presentation will walk through the following QGIS pipeline:
1. assembling and structuring multi-layer spatial datasets
2. performing viewshed analysis for terrain-based signal modeling
3. integrating physical and infrastructural factors into composite suitability maps
4. extending the analysis to user-level variation through pricing tiers

More broadly, this work highlights a particular way of using QGIS: not just to map what is already known, but to reveal spatial systems that are typically unseen or assumed to be immaterial. Even when data is partial or restricted, QGIS offers a set of geoprocessing tools that allow for creative combinations, inference, and experimentation, opening up ways to understand systems that cannot be directly observed. In this sense, QGIS becomes a tool for discovery, capable of generating new spatial readings and informing how we understand and intervene in everyday environments shaped by invisible infrastructures.