South Korea telco SKT alters its billing strategy

www.WirelessFederation.com/news: The billing method of South Korea’s largest mobile network operator by subscribers, SK Telecom (SKT) will be altered and it will start charging its customers for calls on a per-second basis.

SKT has charged for calls on a ten-second basis since it first launched commercial services over an analogue network in 1984, as its current rivals, KT Corp and LG Telecom (LGT) both also do. It’s the first move of the company to alter the billing startegy and in total it expects the change to save its subscribers up to KRW16.8 billion (USD14.5 million) each month.

The decision is expected to be seen as a step in the right direction keeping in mind that the high cost of mobile services has been an area of focus for telecoms regulator the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) in recent years.

According to LGT, it too will restructure its billing and implement per-second charges in the near future but KT has not revealed any such plans.