By Yoon Sung-won
Korea’s telecom authorities are being increasingly pressurized to allocate the 700-megahertz (MHz) frequency for greater use by local telecom carriers to help them grab the lion’s share in the heated competition for next-generation wireless technologies.
Analysts and even government officials have agreed that the 700MHz bandwidth will generate greater economic value when it is used for mobile carriers instead of terrestrial broadcasters, and should be allocated for telecom industry, an expert said.
They called for the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP) that auctioning off the spectrum should help improve broadband services and ensure that mobile operators are well positioned for the eventual step up to 5G technologies.
Park Deok-gyu, an information and communication engineering professor at Mokwon University, stressed that most overseas countries are using this frequency for the telecom industry or considering doing so while almost none of them are allocating it for broadcasters.
“The 700 MHz frequency has been allocated for telecom use around the globe as analyses have shown that it is much more economically feasible to use the frequency for mobile communication than for the ultra high-definition (UHD) broadcasting,” the professor said during a forum jointly held by the Korean Institute of Electromagnetic Engineering and Science and the Korean Society for Journalism and Communication Studies in Seoul, Wednesday.
“As 115 countries worldwide and 85.8 percent of the global population are considering the 700 MHz frequency for telecom purposes, allocating it for terrestrial broadcasting will be going against the norm.”
Park said the use of the 700 MHz frequency for mobile carriers will create up to 7.2 times greater economic value compared with it being used by broadcasters, citing research by the MSIP and KCC.
“Broadcasters have projected that the annual economic value generated from domestic sales of UHD televisions will reach 1.13 trillion won. But the actual value will be no more than 87.1 billion won,” he said. “On the other hand, the country will benefit 2.34 trillion won in financial income in a decade when the frequency is allocated for the telecom industry.”
Telecom companies have had to win frequency capacity through auctions, whereas broadcasters receive the capacity for free.
The professor also said, the nationwide UHD broadcasting will heavily burden the low-income bracket to buy an expensive UHD television, unlike the broadcasters’ claim that their purpose is to promote the public good by distributing the service.
The ongoing rivalry between mobile carriers and terrestrial broadcasters for the allocation of the 700 MHz frequency has been in a stalemate due to opposing interests of the two sides.
The nation’s three main broadcasters ― KBS, MBC and SBS ― are lobbying lawmakers to pass a bill that gives them exclusive rights to the spectrum.
The National Assembly claimed that the frequency should be assigned to terrestrial broadcasters to accommodate the UHD broadcasting service.
The three local mobile carriers ― SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus ― have said the new frequency capacity is much needed to accommodate skyrocketing mobile data traffic.
“Considering that mobile data traffic has rapidly increased and is expected to continue to expand due to the rising demand for high-quality multimedia content, we need to secure extra frequency capacity to prevent any mobile network problems,” a telecom industry source said.