By Bae Ji-sook
Staff Reporter
Customers of SK Telecom have decided to sue the company for restricting customers' rights to choose download tools by monopolizing key services of mobile phones.
The nation's largest telecommunication service provider, with an estimated 21 million members, was accused when it opened music streaming and download service Web site ``Melon'' for its mobile phone users.
The problem occurred when the company's mobile phones required DRM system, a copyright security system only provided by Melon, to put music into the phones. The customers had to join Melon to download music into their phones to convert their information system to DCF files, a DRM encoded one.
However, the Web site sometimes hindered the converting procedure asking the users to use ``Melon'' download service that costs 4,500 won per month. The music downloaded from the Web site does not need additional DRM converting procedures to put into mobile phones.
Some of the customers complained that the company was forcing them to use their charged system by making monopolistic software.
Last December, the Fare Trade Commission fined SK Telecom 330 million won and put a correction order on the service over monopoly charges, but the company refuted that the music download business is a separate business from telecommunication service and that there is no monopolization between them. It even filed for administrative litigation against the order.
Green Consumers Network, a civic group preparing for the lawsuit, said that it is about the company not giving users enough choices of download tools, and that it is impeding fair trade in the market. ``Despite the government correction order, they do not listen. It's time the customers show them something,'' Kim Jin-hee, a network's staff, said.