Google and Naver Call for Network Fee System Improvement

The Korea Startup Forum, the Korea Internet Corporations Association, and local and foreign content providers such as Google, Naver, Netflix, Kakao and Facebook released a statement on Aug. 26, claiming that the South Korean government needs to completely overhaul its network fee calculation structure.

They said the government’s interconnection standards on telecommunication equipment and facilities were the cause of the decline in Facebook connection speed that resulted in litigation between the Korea Communications Commission and Facebook. The government revised the standards in 2016 to introduce connection fee payment between mobile carriers. Since the revision of the standards, South Korean mobile carriers have had to mutually pay usage-based connection fees.

“KT, which has a large amount of Facebook traffic, has had to pay a lot to SK Broadband and LG U+ and this has led to the Facebook burden,” the content providers said, adding, “The unexampled mutual payment obligation and the oligopolistic local network industry have been combined with each other to make South Korea the only country in the world where network costs rise and the rise is adversely affecting the international competitiveness of South Korea’s IT industry and local users’ convenience.”
 

They continued to say, “The rise in network costs that is going on with Internet services such as cloud and mobile video constituting people’s daily activities is adding to people’s pecuniary burden and service costs and this is why the interconnection standards should be revised without delay.”