Competition for roaming fee down system ¡¦ SKT to start first smoothly

[ Jong Ye Lin yeslin@ ] | 2018-03-23 11:18:27
Carriers have also entered the war by lowering their prices on their roaming plans. This is one of the strategies that emphasize the low rate for the government`s universal fare system, such as the recent revision of the contracted rate plan and the introduction of low-priced low-priced rate system. In addition, as the overseas travel population has recently exploded, it seems that young people who occupy a large part of the population are trying to emphasize the convenience of holding these users by showing the use of the country`s wisdom.

SK Telecom was the one who shot the signal. SK Telecom changed its roaming rate system to a major one on March 22. What stands out is the change from the existing per-minute billing system to the per-second billing system for voice roaming services. If users use voice roaming for 1 minute and 30 seconds, they would have to pay 2 minutes in the past, but only pay for 90 seconds of usage.

For the first time in Korea, voice roaming users also receive 3 minutes of free call every day. The average rate of overseas roaming service providers is about 4110 per day. We also introduced a flat-rate billing system. In the future, when using voice roaming, a monthly fee of KRW 10,000 will be charged until 30 minutes a day. Until now, when users talked for 30 minutes, they had to pay about KRW 41,100 in proportion to time.

We have also improved the data roaming pay-as-you-go tariff for users who do not subscribe to the data roaming package. The amount of the charge is a method of imposing the charge in proportion to the usage amount. SK Telecom will reduce its data roaming fee by 87.5% from KRW4506 per 1MB (KRW2.2 per packet) to KRW563 (KRW 0.275 per packet).

SK Telecom`s move to such a move, KT has fallen off the foot. On the 14th, KT has also announced that it will introduce billing per second to the roaming rate system from the second half. At that time, KT made a clear statement until the beginning, but SK Telecom put it into practice first. So, the roaming team inside KT is said to have entered into a discussion.

However, KT has lowered tariffs on data-only charges in October last year. It is the same level as SK Telecom announced this time. KT officials said, "Since the data roaming system has been downgraded, the number of users has been increased by 35% and volume traffic by 250%. KT is also the only one of its service providers to provide `voice roaming rate real-time notification` service.

LG U +, on the other hand, is also in the process of revamping its roaming rate plan. Earlier this year, LG U + launched a data roaming pack, which can lower prices and use up to five times more data. However, with SK Telecom adopting billing per second and KT ahead of billing per second, LG U + seems unlikely to follow the trend.

An industry expert said, "Mobile operators are likely to emphasize low prices for consumers this year in order to keep pace with the government`s telecom cut policy."


By Jong Ye Lin yeslin@


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