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> Why not charge the end user? The entire country is a single market, with 3 major cellular carriers and a handful of broadband carriers all competing for the

by kijin 3y ago

> Why not charge the end user? The entire country is a single market, with 3 major cellular carriers and a handful of broadband carriers all competing for the same population. The competition is so cutthroat, they even publish monthly reports of which ISP stole how many customers from whom. Obviously, no ISP wants to be the first to charge the end user more, or become known as the one that throttles YouTube, and risk losing hundreds of thousands of customers in an instant. Much easier to make the whole thing look like a business disagreement. Note that it is always SK Broadband that whines the loudest about foreign video streaming platforms. Other ISPs like KT are sitting on bigger undersea cables, so they can afford to absorb much more bandwidth without resorting to reputation-destroying surcharges.

yongjik 3y ago
That sounds backwards. If competition were actually cutthroat, no ISP could easily demand payment from Twitch, because then Twitch would just say "Due to the unreasonable demand, Twitch streams will be throttled for SK Telecom users to 360p," and the other ISPs would advertise like hell: "Come to us and enjoy Twitch in its full HD glory!" The fact that it doesn't happen is a strong indication that the competition is lukewarm, especially considering that Korean antitrust laws are pretty much toothless and companies collude all the time.
- kijin 3y ago
  That's why SK Broadband (not to be confused with SK Telecom, a much more popular ISP that shares little infrastructure with SK Broadband) goes to the government and whines about evil foreign companies clogging up their pipes. They can't make the first move in the market, unless everyone else is required to do the same. Korean telcos do collude all the time, but even here, a surcharge for consumers who were previously promised unlimited data is not something they can get away with.

by kijin 3y ago

yongjik 3y ago

That sounds backwards. If competition were actually cutthroat, no ISP could easily demand payment from Twitch, because then Twitch would just say "Due to the unreasonable demand, Twitch streams will be throttled for SK Telecom users to 360p," and the other ISPs would advertise like hell: "Come to us and enjoy Twitch in its full HD glory!" The fact that it doesn't happen is a strong indication that the competition is lukewarm, especially considering that Korean antitrust laws are pretty much toothless and companies collude all the time.

kijin 3y ago
That's why SK Broadband (not to be confused with SK Telecom, a much more popular ISP that shares little infrastructure with SK Broadband) goes to the government and whines about evil foreign companies clogging up their pipes. They can't make the first move in the market, unless everyone else is required to do the same. Korean telcos do collude all the time, but even here, a surcharge for consumers who were previously promised unlimited data is not something they can get away with.