Information Ministry Wants Caller ID to Be Free

Mobile phone users will pay less for their caller ID (CID) service as the service will be provided free of charge after being incorporated into base rates or become much cheaper.

Though subscribers will continue to pay for the short messaging service (SMS), the charges for that are highly likely to go down as well.

On July 1, the Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) held a strategy meeting for the latter half of the year 2005 at its training center in Cheonan, Chungcheongnam-do. At the meeting, about 300 participants including officials from affiliated organizations and owners of related businesses were present. The Information Ministry told the audience that it will change the service rates in the aforementioned ways.

MIC Telecommunications Policy Bureau Director Kim Dong-su said, “It is right to let mobile carriers decide on their rates. But the CID service is such a widely used feature that it has to be included into the base rate.”

Up to now, SK Telecom and KTF have been charging 1,000 won for the CID service, and LG Telecom 2,000 won for it a month. Last year, SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom rang up 191.4 billion won, 84.7 billion won and 89.1 billion won in revenues, respectively.

Until now, mobile phone providers have not raised their base rates. So the price of the CID service will be either removed after being included in the base rate or fall considerably.

Director Kim said, “For now, we need to keep the SMS charge.” But he hinted at a possible drop in the SMS charge by saying, “We will negotiate with mobile carriers on the text message charge (which currently costs 30 won a message).”

Do-Young Kim nirvana1@donga.com