By Lee Min-hyung
The government will start the controversial telecom fee reduction drive in September, Science and ICT Minister Yoo Young-min said Wednesday.
“The science ministry will raise the discount rate for the telecom subscription to 25 percent from the existing 20 percent, which will take effect in September,” he told reporters.
Any telecom subscriber here can take advantage of the telecom discount when signing up for a one-year or two-year subscription contract with a mobile carrier on a handset purchase, choosing between a monthly rate-cut or a one-time subsidy.
The latest move comes as part of the Moon Jae-in administration’s campaign pledge to reduce household telecom expenses.
The promise has brought up a heated debate between the government and mobile carriers here. They strongly opposed the move, as it would hold back their plan to make investments in such areas as the upcoming fifth-generation (5G) network infrastructure.
But Yoo said the telecom operators including SK Telecom, KT and LG Uplus have to come up with new business models with the 5G network. He called for them to reduce their heavy reliance on major revenue streams - mostly from the recurring telecom fees from their tens of millions of subscribers.
“Mobile carriers should remain more agile in shifting their revenue generation processes,” he said.
On Tuesday, he held his first meeting with SK Telecom CEO Park Jung-ho. The company is the nation’s leading mobile carrier.
But the science minister said he would do the utmost to find middle ground where both parties can benefit rather than pushing for a one-sided policy.
“We agreed to narrow our differences through dialogue,” the minister said, without elaborating further over details of the ongoing telecom fee controversies. They include the abolition of the basic telecom fee of 11,000 won ($9.81). This, one of Moon’s campaign pledges, turned out to be unrealistic as the government practically scrapped the plan amid fierce opposition from telecom operators.
Yoo said he would soon hold a meeting with the heads of the two smaller mobile carriers.
Yoo took office on July 11 as the new science minister, replacing the previous chief Choi Yang-hee who led the organization since July 2014 for three years.
Besides the local telecom industry issues, Yoo stressed that the nation should leap into a software powerhouse, naming big data as the driving force toward the Fourth Industrial Revolution.
“We know how crucial big data is, but have so far kept a low-profile approach in terms of the government investment in the technology,” he said. “The government and business circles should take a more flexible and aggressive attitude for big data.”