Slipping Into Smartphone-Driven World
Rules Suppressing Mobile Payment, Games to Be Rewritten
By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff Reporter
Smartphones are intelligent, and South Korean government officials are finally accepting that they shouldn't be made retarded by the country's aging Internet regime.
The popularity of these high-end handsets, which work more like handheld computers than conventional phones, has the technology industry drooling over the excesses of a mobile Internet explosion.
Policymakers are also getting serious about improving the country's mobile Internet environment, pressing telecommunications giant KT, which has a dual strength in broadband and mobile telephony, to double the size of their Wi-Fi zones by the end of the year.
KT and SK Telecom, the top mobile-phone carrier, will also have to expand their coverage of the portable Internet, WiBro (wireless broadband), the local variant of mobile WiMAX, to 84 cities by 2011.
The wireless carriers were also ordered to change their consumer policies on fixed-rate data plans, allowing subscribers to use their remaining data credit in the following month when not exhausting their monthly allowance, the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) said Thursday.
Twisting the arm of telecommunications companies is the easier part of the job; rewriting the country's legal framework on Internet usage, which had been criticized for suppressing mobile-based electronic payment and entertainment, will be a more difficult task.
However, KCC officials promise that a regulatory shakeup is coming.
A wider variety of verification methods will be allowed for encrypted communication on smartphones, government officials say, which will benefit banks, credit card companies and online retailers that are hoping to hit the gold trail in the mobile wallet era.
Also to be reconsidered is the country's censorship rules on games, which require all game content to be approved by the state before being made commercially available. The law has been a major letdown for smartphone users, as it prevented them from downloading games with their local accounts for global content platforms such as Apple's App Store or the Android Market.
``There has been growing complaints from smartphone users about the security requirements for mobile payment, especially about mandating the use of public-key certificates. However, as agreed in last week's meeting between the President and representatives of related ministries, the government will rely on a larger variety of verification methods,'' said Yang Jeong-hwan of the KCC's telecommunications convergence policy bureau.
``The pre-release censors of games by the Games Rating Board have been preventing the rapid growth of the mobile applications market. We are considering changes, including leaving it to licensed online content market operators to review the games.''
End of Korea-Specific Rules?
The popularity of smartphones has financial services companies and retailers hoping for an expanded mobile payment market. However, there was disappointment earlier this year when the Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) said that all financial transactions on these advanced handsets should be subject to the same security requirements that control online transactions by computers.
The current law states that all encrypted online communications on computers require the use of electronic signatures based on public-key certificates.
The FSS's decision had the Ministry of Public Administration and Security working with the Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) to adopt standard software to enable public-key certificates and other security requirements on smartphones.
However, critics claim that the decision to pick a specific technology to control transactions over different mobile platforms is an ill-advised move, as it may eventually expose mobile users to a similar, shaky security environment experienced by computer users in the Microsoft-dominated desktop world.
Such claims clearly were convincing enough to the KCC, which seems to be succeeding in persuading other government agencies that more and perhaps better verification methods could be available.
Following a meeting with President Lee Myung-bak last week, government agencies were able to agree that public-key certificates won't be required for smaller online transactions of less than 300,000 won. The decision now has credit card companies like Shinhan, Samsung and BC rushing to develop their own payment programs and security modules for smartphones, and their versions of mobile wallets are expected to be available by the end of the month.
Apple and Google, the main backer of the Android mobile platform, were forced to shut down game categories of the content market in Korea, where government officials won't have a prayer to review massive amount of games that appear on the global content platforms each day.
However, it appears that Apple and Google will be allowed to sell games to Korean smartphone users soon. According to KCC officials, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism is looking to establish a licensing process for the operators of the mobile content platforms, which will replace the current process of having the Games Rating Board check and stamp every game that comes out of the gate.
Although the government in recent years had intended to impose rules on Internet users, critics wondered whether these attempts are being rendered irrelevant as the Web goes mobile.
One of the laws that may fail the test of time happens to be the most controversial one ― the country's real-name identification requirements for Internet users.
Since last year, Korean Internet users have been required to submit their resident registration codes, the Korean equivalent of social security numbers, before posting files or comments on Web sites with more than 100,000 daily visitors.
Although critics raised concerns that the rules may suppress legitimate online speech, government officials insisted that limiting anonymity would be inevitable to curb cyber-bullying and libelous claims on the Internet.
However, it's proving to be difficult to maintain the requirements in the mobile Internet environment, and the KCC is now saying it is considering an ``alternative system.'' The KCC has been facing criticism for being inconsistent, as it recently decided not to prevent iPhone users from posting comments on YouTube without real-name registrations, a freedom that desktop users had lost a year earlier.
There are also complaints by Korean Internet companies such as NHN, which operates top search site Naver (www.naver.com), and Daum (www.daum.net), that the online verification system puts them in a competitive disadvantage, since foreign services such as Google can't be controlled by the same rules.
``There is a lot of debate whether the real-name requirements had any meaningful effect in curbing cyber bullying, and the complaints from Korean Internet companies have been growing as well,'' Yang said.
``We still believe that there needs to be measures to motivate better Web behavior, and we will continue to talk with Internet companies to come up with a solution that can make everybody happy.''