By Yoon Ja-young
Those waiting for the ultra-fast fourth generation (4G), long-term evolution (LTE) mobile services won’t be able to subscribe to unlimited data schemes. Mobile carriers, who regret introducing the unlimited data plans for third generation (3G) services amid a data explosion and falling profitability, are determined not to make the same mistake with 4G.
SK Telecom, the country’s biggest mobile carrier, and LG Uplus, the smallest player, are scheduled to launch LTE mobile phone services around the end of the month. “We are currently in discussions with the Korea Communications Commission over the mobile rates for LTE services,” a representative for SK Telecom said. As the dominant market player, SK is obliged to receive approval from the regulator over how much it will charge subscribers.
According to industry sources, SK Telecom is suggesting between 40,000 and 100,000 won monthly charges for voice calls and between 300 megabytes to five gigabytes of data.
Currently, mobile carriers offer unlimited data service for 3G subscribers for monthly charges of 55,000 won or more, but it won’t be available to 4G users. The unlimited data scheme was first introduced by SK Telecom in August last year, mostly to combat its competitor KT which was increasing its market share as the sole supplier of the globally popular Apple iPhone here. KT and LG Uplus also introduced similar plans, and subscribers welcomed the idea of freely using data services without having to worry about the bill.
A year has passed since the introduction of unlimited data schemes, and mobile carriers want to scrap it, though none of them want to be the first for fear of losing customers.
Heavy users of unlimited data services are the headache for mobile carriers. According to statistics, the top 1 percent of users incurs 45 percent of data traffic, weighing down the already burdened network and causing complaints from others. Since the introduction of the unlimited data scheme, the data traffic grew by around 30 percent a month on average.
“The idea of unlimited data was nonsense in the first place. But we can’t be the first to scrap it,” an executive of a mobile carrier said. Mobile carriers overseas have been scrapping such plans or pressuring heavy users by slowing down data transmission speeds for them.
If an unlimited data scheme is applied to the ultra-fast LTE service, it may motivate heavy users to use the network for their laptops or tablets by linking them with an LTE smartphone. The network, then, will be jammed again.
“Speed is the core value of LTE. We are considering the benefit of the majority in setting up the data schemes,” the representative for SK Telecom said.