Mobile Carriers Offer Discounts

SK Telecom and KT, each leading wireless and wired phone service providers, announced new discount plans yesterday. The former will offer special family discounts while the latter will provide discounts for certain combinations of airtime plans. The new moves will trigger a race among telecommunications companies for lower rates.

From April, SK Telecom will take 50 percent off the monthly subscription fees if the aggregate total of the subscription period of a subscriber and the family members meet certain requirements, and charge 50 percent less for the airtime between family members.

Under the plan, 10 percent discount will apply if the aggregate subscription period amounts less than 10 years, 20 if it amounts 10 to 19 years, 30 if it amounts to 20 to 29 years, and 50 if it amounts to 30 years or more.

According to SK Telecom, if each of the five members of a family uses the services for three years, each of them will receive 20 percent discount, amounting to 4,040 won per month for each (based on a regular two-hour monthly airtime plan).

The company will also increase the discount rate between its customers. Now, it charges up to 65 percent less for the connection. In the future, it will charge up to 80 percent less for the customers of two or more years of subscription. The new set of discounts will take effect sometime in March. Furthermore, the monthly subscription fee for its wireless Internet service will be lowered from 26,000 won to 10,000 won, starting May.

SK Telecom Marketing Vice President Bae Jun-dong explained, “Putting all the discounts we initiated in last October, including the lower charge for text messaging, we will charge our customers 510 billion won less every year.”

Likewise, KT will launch a special discount plan of taking off 10 percent of the basic subscription fee if its customer, already subscribing to its local phone service or high speed Internet service, additionally buys mobile telecommunications services, Internet TV services or Internet phone services (50 percent).

KT Marketing Director Lee Byeong-wu stressed, “Let’s say a customer pays 148,000 won for the local phone and mobile 3G cell phone services. The customer can save 16,922 won (20.6 percent), once all the discounts apply for the long-time subscription and the additional new service.

KTF and LG Telecom criticized the initiatives of the leading companies, saying the leading companies will monopolize customers. Still, they promised to introduce their versions of special discount plans soon.

Some consumer watchdog groups, including the Green Consumer Network in Korea, argued that the plans are not substantial enough, since they do not apply across the board.

nex@donga.com behappy@donga.com