Telecoms lay out plans to cut mobile fees

SEOUL, Sept. 27 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's mobile carriers have accepted a
government proposal to cut fees, the nation's telecom regulator said Sunday.

In an effort to boost competition and reduce the cost of calls, the Korea
Communications Commission (KCC) earlier urged the three mobile operators -- SK
Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Telecom Inc. -- to voluntarily lower their rates.
The new price plan comes about a month after the Paris-based Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development released a report saying that most South
Korean mobile phone users pay more than customers in other member nations. At the
time, the mobile operators refuted the report.
But SK Telecom, the largest Korean telecom operator, has now agreed to make
changes to how it calculates call charges. Instead of billing for every 10
seconds of usage, the company will start charging per second. The change is to
take effect in March next year, according to the KCC.
For the first time since 2000, leading telecom companies SK and KT will also cut
activation fees for their mobile services, paid in the first month of the mobile
service, by as much as 20 percent.
Following recommendations by the commission, all three companies have agreed to
bring down charges for long-term customers and promote the use of pay-as-you-go
mobile services. They will lower the prepaid rate by 15 to 25 percent.
As the recent rise of smartphones drives demand for cheap data plans, the telecom
companies will also cut mobile data fees by the maximum 88 percent, the
commission said.
Market insiders expected it the move to help lower the cost of living in South
Korea, but expressed some concern that it could weaken the companies'
profitability down the road.
ygkim@yna.co.kr
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