KCC to charge Facebook KRW 400 million penalty¡¦ First penalty case for foreign internet company
Kim Ji Young | kjy@ | 2018-03-22 11:24:30

The Korea Communications Commission has imposed a fining penalty with a correction order to report that the user had suffered a change in the access route of Facebook. This is the first time that global business operators have violated the interests of domestic users.

The discussions on improving equity for overseas Internet service providers, which had been controversial for counter-discrimination against free riding with the measures taken by the Korea Communications Commission, are expected to be in full swing.

The Korea Communications Commission held a general meeting and decided on the issue of violations of the Telecommunications Business Act by restricting users` use of the service by arbitrarily changing the access path of a specific Internet service provider on March 21.

The KCC had changed the access route to foreign countries without justifiable reasons, and it was said that it caused damage to users such as connection failure and speed reduction. Besides, it was enough to recognize it in advance, and after confirming damage after complaints, it maintained about 10 months without solving the problem and judged it as a "serious violation" of the Telecommunications Business Act.

Facebook is at odds over network fees with SK Broadband. By the end of 2016, Facebook service rates for related service users have been slowed down by changing their access routes overseas. At the time, the complaints of SK broadband users had run up and had to solve the problem temporarily by expanding the costly overseas (Hong Kong) network.

The Korea Communications Commission launched a survey on the damage caused by the arbitrary change of access routes and the violation of the Telecommunications Business Act from May last year. An official from the Korea Communications Commission said, "Facebook has slowed down the path access to SK broadband users by 4.5 times, and LG U + has slowed to 2.4 times." User complaints are that before SK Broadband, 12 times more than the number of users has been confirmed that the damage, "he said.

Lee Hyo-song, head of the Korea Communications Commission, pointed out, "This case is a big deal from the fact that global telecom operators arbitrarily changed the access route without consulting domestic mobile telecommunication carriers, Is the number one provider of social network services, and has 12 million users, so it has a big influence on the users. " "We hope that this action will not be repeated with this corrective action, and the Korea Communications Commission will respond to the situation ahead of schedule by improving the system."

By Kim Ji Young kjy@


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