Seven million mobile users in South Korea will be given free unlimited data upon exhausting their monthly data caps. There is just one catch, though: they will be limited to a maximum speed of 400 Kbps.
The ruling comes after the South Korean Ministry of Science and ICT concluded that the country’s three major carriers, SK Telecom, KT, and LG Uplus, had failed to implement what it calls “basic access controls” between internet-facing systems, and allowed hackers to infiltrate their systems. SK Telecom, in particular, was fined US$97 million (~RM383 million) for the snafu; LG UPlus had approximately 3TB of call records stolen by the hackers; and KT deployed fermtocells with horrible security that, in turn, exposed customers to fraud and spying.
Still on the South Korean telco KT, the company was also accused of secretly installing malware on around 600,000 customers’ PC, in an effort to disrupt torrent traffic and, in a sense, curb piracy. The telco essentially employed dedicated internal teams to monitor users, as well as modify some file transfers. Ultimately, these acts prompted the local authorities into launching an investigation, as the telco could have violated communications-laws.
“We have now reached a critical juncture where we must move beyond mere pledges not to repeat past mistakes,” Bae Kyung-hoon, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Science, said. “Instead, we must respond with a level of innovation and contribution – a complete transformation – that the public can tangibly perceive.”
400 Kbps is obviously not the fastest speeds one can get, especially in South Korea, a country that can proudly boast having one of the world’s fastest mobile internet speeds. As an example, the country averages between 139 and 250 Mbps in average download speeds, while its 5G speeds average around 400 Mbps. By comparison, Malaysia’s average 5G download speeds are currently 242 Mbps.
That said, the free data awarded by the South Korean government to its seven million mobile users serves as more of a message, and is actually there for the most basic of mobile tasks, which include messaging either by SMS or messaging apps, plus two factor authentication (2FA).
(Source: Techspot)
