Seoul, March 12 : South Korea’s antitrust regulator said on Wednesday it has decided to fine the country’s three major mobile carriers a total of 114 billion won (US$78.5 million) for alleged collusion in mobile number portability (MNP).
SK Telecom Co., the local industry leader, was slapped with a fine of 42.7 billion won, while KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. were ordered to pay 33 billion won and 38.3 billion won, respectively, according to the Fair Trade Commission (FTC), reports Yonhap news agency.
The FTC said the three companies have allegedly monitored the net increase and decrease in MNP transfers on a daily basis to maintain a nearly equal distribution of switching customers between November 2015 and September 2022.
They regulated daily transfer numbers using sales incentives, or payments made to distribution networks and consumers switching carriers under MNP, to control market share and minimise competition.
The regulator noted that the companies had colluded to limit competition with each other in the NMP market, as the country’s mobile subscription has been already saturated with virtually no new subscribers.
As a result of the collusion, the net daily increase and decrease of MNP transfers hovered around 3,000 per day in 2014 but dropped to 200 in 2016, according to the FTC.
In addition, the total number of daily MNP transfers declined sharply from 28,800 in 2014 to 7,200 in 2022.
“By uncovering this seven-year-long collusion, we expect increased competition and lower household communication costs,” an FTC official said. “The watchdog vowed to continue monitoring market practices to ensure fair competition.”
Meanwhile, the monthly mobile data traffic running on fifth-generation (5G) networks was expected to surpass 1 million terabytes for the first time in December, as news viewership soared following President Yoon Suk Yeol’s surprise martial law declaration.
The usage of the high-speed network remained above 900,000 TB since April, reaching 996,782 TB in October, according to data from the Ministry of Science and ICT. (IANS)