Lee Gyu-lee is a business writer at The Korea Times, focusing primarily on IT & telecommunications, the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy and KOTRA. Prior to this, she has covered a wide range of cultural news, from film, television and K-pop to lifestyle and fashion.
SK Telecom continues to lose users after data breach
A sign announcing online registration for universal subscriber identity module (USIM) card replacement is displayed at an SK Telecom store in Seoul, May 20. Yonhap
By Lee Gyu-lee
SK Telecom has seen a huge drop in the number of subscribers since a large-scale data breach hit hard the nation's largest mobile carrier in April.
Mobile number portability (MNP) switches across SK Telecom, KT, LG Uplus and mobile virtual network operators (MVNO) reached nearly 933,509 subscribers in May, the Korea Telecommunications Operators Association said Monday. This represents about a 77 percent surge compared to March's 525,937 subscribers.
For the past five years, the MNP switch counts have not surpassed 600,000, but since SK Telecom’s cyberattack, the number spiked to about 700,000 in April and has continued to rise.
The number of SK Telecom users who switched off to KT was the highest, reaching about 196,700 last month, while about 158,600 went to LG Uplus. People switching to MVNO from SK Telecom also increased to 85,180 in May. That number usually hovers around 50,000.
In contrast, new users transferring to SK Telecom from other carriers dropped to about 10,000 each. Before the hacking incident, SK Telecom had seen around 40,000 subscribers switching from KT and LG Uplus and about 20,000 from MVNOs.
As the telecom giant, which once had about 25 million subscribers, suffers the fallout from the data breach, the company is at risk of seeing its market share drop. The Ministry of Science and ICT reported that the company’s market share had been gradually slipping since January, recording 40.42 percent, 40.34 percent and 40.26 percent in January, February and March, respectively.
Given the high number of subscribers switching to competing carriers, SK Telecom’s market share is likely to fall below the 40 percent threshold soon.
Meanwhile, SK Telecom has been grappling to secure its user base by increasing subsidies for new cell phone models. It has also ramped up efforts to replace leaked universal subscriber identity module (USIM) data by providing new ones for all of its users.
As of Monday, about 5.75 million users have received USIM replacements. Out of about 9.19 million users who signed up for new USIMs, 3.44 million of them are still waiting for the physical card replacement due to the shortage.