South Korea: Mobile providers promise uniform minimum data rate of 400 kbit/s
South Korea's largest mobile providers will no longer throttle mobile internet to unusable speeds after data allowances are exhausted.
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South Korea's largest mobile providers will only throttle data speeds to 400 kbit/s after exhausting data allowances in their plans to keep services like messengers and map applications usable. This is reported by the news agency Yonhap, citing the Ministry of Science and ICT, which reached an agreement with SK Telecom, KT, and LG Uplus. The move is expected to benefit almost 7.2 million customers who do not have unlimited data plans. They are expected to save around 190 million Euros annually, as it may no longer be necessary to purchase additional data volume at a high cost. The changes are to be implemented by the end of June.
As a trust-building measure
In addition to increasing the minimum data rate, the government has also achieved an expansion of quotas for voice calls and SMS messages available to elderly people over 65 in plans with limited service scope. A total of 1.4 million seniors are expected to benefit from this. According to the ministry, both measures are intended to help providers regain trust, which they have lost, for example, through massive data leaks. The right to access data for communication purposes must also be strengthened, “to ensure everyday communication and basic access to information for everyone”, Yonhap quotes.
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The massive throttling of data rates in mobile plans when the booked volume is used up is also a common practice in this country, although not without positive exceptions. Normally, you can only surf at 64 kbit/s, which is far too slow for meaningful use. Most applications do not work at all with this speed. Depending on the plan, however, stronger throttling to 32 or even 16 kbit/s is still common. There are even plans where the internet is completely blocked, but in practice, the throttling has almost comparable consequences. At the same time, some providers mercilessly exploit the predicament of users without remaining data volume; purchased data is then much pricier than what is included in the contract.
(mho)
