The logos of South Korea’s three major carriers — SK Telecom Co. (L), KT Corp. (C) and LG Uplus Corp. (R) — are shown in this photo take on Feb. 16, 2023. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Feb. 17 (Korea Bizwire) — After President Yoon Seok-yeol on Wednesday underscored the need to expand mobile phone plan options as a way to ease the financial burden on households, the nation’s major telecom operators are facing increasing pressure to make extra efforts.
On the same day, the nation’s big three mobile carriers — SK Telecom Co., KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. — announced that they would grant free mobile data to their customers for a month in March.
Consumer response to the plan, however, was chilly.
Consumers pointed out that major mobile carriers have benefited from an oligopoly, adding that in times of economic difficulty, they should play a public role, but their temporary support such as the granting of free additional mobile data is not enough.
In particular, voices are growing that they should lower their prices to reduce the burden on households since they have ample room to accommodate customers given that they chalked up massive operating profits last year.
After facing criticism that they increased the financial burden on customers by limiting data options to less than 10 gigabytes (GB) or more than 100 GB, they hurriedly released interim rate plans in the summer of last year.
However, the then-released products only had data options of 24 to 30 GB.
Consumer groups and political communities pointed out that this data capacity was still too small to be classified as an interim rate plan.
J. S. Shin (js_shin@koreabizwire.com)
