By Kim Tong-hyung
Korea’s telecommunications regulator says it hasn’t discarded plans to enforce a unified mobile telephony prefix, but it doesn’t appear to have the passion to endorse the idea either.
Public anger has been significant over the government plans to eventually have all mobile telephony numbers start with the prefix 010, and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is likely to declare a three-year postponement to the transition.
The scheme for the unified prefix was announced in 2004 when the Ministry of Information and Communication, which preceded the KCC, required the 010 prefix for all third-generation (3G) wireless users, shattering the old way of different carriers having different prefixes. The ministry’s plan was to enforce all mobile telephony numbers to start with 010 when 3G users begin to account for more than 80 percent of all wireless users.
Thanks to the smartphone boom triggered by the Apple iPhone, the 80-percent mark was reached in February this year, and the country’s 3G users now exceed 40 percent.
However, the public-relations (PR) sensitive KCC is apparently reluctant to pull the trigger and plans to reveal a rewritten version of the policy, based on the three-year delay, by the end of the month or in early September. During this period, mobile users who stuck with the old prefixes of 011, 016, 017 and 018 will be allowed to subscribe to 3G services without changing their numbers, sources said.
Civic groups, such as the YMCA, and lawmakers, including Creative Korea Party representative and former KT chief executive Lee Yong-kyung, have been calling for the KCC to dump the plans for the unified prefix.
“It’s absurd that the users of the 01X prefixes are being blocked from accessing 3G services — this would add speed to the 3G transition and make it easier for carriers to return their 2G spectrums. Mobile telephony users should retain the right to keep their old numbers instead of being forced to change them,” said a YMCA representative.
The idea to introduce a unified prefix had much to do with the market dominance of top carrier SK Telecom, which had been using the 011 prefix before the commercialization of 3G. Smaller carriers like KTF, now KT, and LG Telecom had complained that the 011 prefix gave SK Telecom brand power that was impossible for them to compete with.
Six years later, however, such arguments seem basically irrelevant. SK Telecom still has over 50 percent of Korean mobile users as customers when 80 percent of them converted to 3G.
The decision to delay the transition to the 010 prefix by three years will benefit KT, the second-largest mobile carrier and the country’s biggest fixed-line telephone and Internet provider.
KT is planning to end its 2G mobile services in June next year, but still has around 940,000 users who use numbers that start with a non-010 code.
KT has been concerned over the possibilities of the users switching to rival carriers to keep their number through number portability, rather than converting to 3G.