Abolition of the Dantong Act… Similar but different abolition proposals of the ruling and opposition parties [IT클로즈업] : ZUM News

[디지털데일리 강소현기자] As the government decides to abolish the ‘Act on the Improvement of Distribution Structure of Mobile Communications Terminal Devices’ (hereinafter referred to as the Mobile Communication Act), it is expected that legal measures will be put in place to prevent a decline in consumer welfare and market confusion after the abolition.

In particular, as both the ruling and opposition parties share the same position regarding the abolition of the Single Tong Act, the key is to come up with a compromise in the future. The ruling and opposition parties agree on the direction of self-regulating subsidies while improving user welfare, but differ on the details.

According to the National Assembly and related industries on the 27th, Rep. Kim Hyun (Democratic Party of Korea), a member of the National Assembly’s Science, Technology, Information, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, recently proposed an amendment to the Telecommunications Business Act.

The Democratic Party of Korea’s direction for abolishing the Single Tong Act focuses on ‘abolishing the subsidy disclosure system.’ This is because its effectiveness has been pointed out.

Initially, the Mobile Communications Act was intended to make the distribution structure in the terminal market transparent by specifying the subsidies paid to manufacturers and mobile carriers respectively, but it was criticized as a ‘half-length bill’ as manufacturers were excluded.

Accordingly, the Dantong Act stopped short of artificially regulating the discriminatory payment of subsidies. The limit of additional subsidies paid by distribution channels to consumers is limited to 15% of the publicly announced subsidies. In other words, the opaque distribution structure remained the same and a cap was placed on subsidies, which was criticized for reducing consumer convenience.

In order to avoid repeating this situation, the law changed the phrase ‘fee discount at a level equivalent to the subsidy’ to ‘fee discount’. This is to enable telecommunications companies to provide rate discounts to consumers regardless of subsidies. In addition, it was decided to reinstate the obligation for terminal manufacturers to submit data related to incentives.

However, there are many hurdles to overcome even after the bill is proposed. First of all, agreement between the ruling and opposition parties is key. Before the opposition party, Rep. Park Chung-kwon (People Power Party) proposed a bill to abolish the Single Tong Act. The ruling party, the People Power Party, previously announced that it would promote the ‘Abolishment of the Single Tong Act’ bill, proposed by Rep. Park, as a key bill to save people’s livelihoods.

The ‘Dantong Act Abolition’ proposed by Rep. Park maintains the ‘selective contract discount’ system that provides communication cost reduction benefits to consumers who did not receive a terminal discount, and for this purpose, the underlying law is transferred from the ‘Dantong Act’ to the ‘Telecommunications Business Act’. The main point is to do this.

In other words, only the provisions directly related to improving user welfare were saved, and regulation of store manufacturers was left to autonomy.

Meanwhile, the government as well as the industry agree with the purpose of abolishing the Single Tong Act, but maintain the position that a cautious approach must be taken. This is because there are subtle differences in opinions between business operators regarding the direction for improvement. In particular, concerns are raised about manufacturers’ submission of incentive-related data.

Minister of Science and ICT Yoo Sang-im said in a recent audit of government affairs conducted by the National Assembly’s Science and Defense Committee, “In the case of (manufacturer) Samsung Electronics, we are competing in the global market, so related impacts must also be considered,” and Second Vice Minister of Science and ICT Kang Do-hyun said. “I have already told you about the issue of the clause, but we need to be more careful because of the company’s content,” he said. “I think additional discussions are needed during various discussions.”

– Copyright ⓒ Digital Daily. Reproduction and redistribution prohibited –

The categories of this article follow the classification of media outlets.

The category an article belongs to is classified by the media company.
News organizations can classify an article into two or more categories.