By Michael Ha
Staff Reporter
A lawmaker said Thursday that he will submit a bill next week to bring changes to what he called ``unfair'' and ``senseless'' mobile phone rates.
Currently in Korea, major mobile carriers use what is called a 10-second increment rate system. It rounds up the phone usage for each call to the next nearest 10-second. For example, a talk time that actually lasted one minute and 11 seconds would be rounded up to one minute and 20 seconds for billing purposes.
Rep. Kim Gi-hyun of the governing Grand National Party said he wants to put an end to this billing practice which he described as a hidden phone charge for tens of millions of cell phone users.
``Presently, Korean mobile network operators calculate billing for their customers based on a 10-second increment for each call,'' Kim said. ``That results in an unfair and senseless billing system where an 11-second cell phone conversation, for example, gets charged as a 20-second one.''
He said he would introduce a proposal to the National Assembly next week that would force mobile carriers to adopt a one-second increment billing system. The bill would be submitted as a draft revision to the Telecommunications Business Law.
Kim noted that according to a finding by the Board of Audit and Inspection, a mobile phone user in Korea gets charged for additional five seconds for each call on average because of this 10-second billing system.
The board found that major mobile carriers in Korea netted an additional 870 billion won ($870 million) in 2006 by using this billing practice.
Judging from some of the community postings on the Internet, there may be strong support for the lawmaker's proposal.
``A lot of cell phone users would like to lower their cell phone payments. But most consumers don't even know about this 10-second billing system,'' one person posted on the Internet. ``I think it would be great if the lawmakers could force mobile carriers to drop this 10-second charging practice.''
Still, the bill could face strong opposition from the telecommunications industry. ``We don't think our billing system is unfair or unreasonable, especially when compared with billing practices in other countries,'' said Choi Jong-kak, the media relations manager for KTF, one of the three largest mobile carriers in the country.
Choi told The Korea Times that of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) member countries, seven countries, including Australia and Spain, use a 30-second increment rounding-up system as their main billing system.
In the United States, Verizon, one of the largest mobile service providers, uses a one-minute incremental system, rounding up each call time to the next minute, he noted.
``So what we have in Korea is a fair, reasonable billing system. Of course, there are countries that use a one-second incremental billing system. But in those countries, an additional fee, called `a setup charge,' is often added to the bill,'' he said.