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| Korea Communications Commission Chairman Han Sang-hyuk, left, shakes hands with Ted Osius, Google's vice president for government affairs and public policy in Asia-Pacific, during their meeting at the KCC, Nov. 22. At the time, Han asked Google to cooperate in promoting fair agreements on how to share data traffic costs. / Courtesy of Korea Communications Commission |
By Jun Ji-hye
Both internet service providers (ISPs) and content providers (CPs) are raising skepticism about the effectiveness of the government's guidelines on network fee contracts, claiming it is uncertain whether the guidelines will promote fair agreements between the two parties on how to share data traffic costs, industry officials said Friday.
A draft of the guidelines was unveiled by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) during a public hearing held at the National Assembly, Thursday, amid growing controversy here that Google, Netflix and other global CPs have had a "free ride" on networks established by local ISPs and earned a lot of money, while Naver, Kakao and other domestic IT companies pay the fees regularly.
The communications regulator said it has prepared the draft for the past year by collecting opinions from various industry figures and scholars to help ISPs and CPs ensure fairness in their network fee contracts.
The guidelines impose a duty of good faith and fair dealing upon each party.
The KCC plans to finalize the guidelines within the year after collecting additional opinions and carrying out consultations with the Ministry of Science and ICT.
But ISPs ― SK Broadband, KT and LG Uplus ― are calling for the government to include more specific clauses in the guidelines demanding CPs share the responsibility to ensure quality network connections for users.
"CPs surely need to share network use fees as their data-heavy services generate significant network traffic," an official from a telecommunications company said. "Institutional basis for this should be in place."
For their part, CPs are opposing the establishment of the guidelines, claiming that signing network fee contracts is a job for private companies, thus the government's intervention is not appropriate.
Korean CPs in particular are raising concerns that the guidelines, which are not legally binding, will only target domestic companies and will eventually aggravate their difficulties amid intensifying competition with global IT giants.
"There will be no way of regulating global enterprises even if they do not comply with the guidelines," an official from a domestic IT company said.
The government tried to remove concerns over the effectiveness of the guidelines, saying they will afford a sound basis when disputes between global CPs and local ISPs occur.
"The guidelines will be applied to both domestic and global CPs. Though the guidelines are not legally binding, they can become criteria in interpreting laws and ordinances," said Pan Sang-kwon, a director of the consumer policy coordination division at the KCC.
