Ministry of Science and ICT and KCC Inspect KT Internet Quality Issues... Revising Terms of Service

Inspection of Whether the Telecommunications Company Intentionally Violated Prohibition Regulations

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] The Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) announced on the 21st that they have decided to jointly conduct an on-site inspection to verify the facts related to the recent quality degradation of KT's 10 Giga internet service.

The KCC plans to focus on inspecting whether telecom companies have violated the Telecommunications Business Act by intentionally reducing internet speeds, compensation according to terms of service, and procedures during internet installation. Meanwhile, the Ministry of Science and ICT will comprehensively review the domestic situation and overseas cases to promote improvements to the terms of service system.

This controversy spread after YouTuber Itssub revealed on his YouTube channel on the 17th that the KT 10 Giga internet service he uses was actually provided at a speed of only 100 Mbps, which is one one-hundredth of the promised speed. During the complaint process, the rude response of customer service staff was also pointed out.

KT also acknowledged the problematic issues. KT posted an apology on its official website on the same day, stating, "We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience and concern caused by the recent quality degradation of the 10 Giga bps internet service," and "We are very sorry for not carefully considering the customer's perspective during the process of responding to customers who experienced inconvenience."

Regarding the cause of the quality degradation, KT explained, "We confirmed that there was an error in setting customer speed information during the expansion and replacement of 10 Giga internet equipment." Additionally, after conducting a full survey of 10 Giga internet users, KT identified errors in the information of 24 customers and immediately corrected them.

KT added, "We will re-examine and supplement the system that automatically detects errors to ensure no inconvenience to internet users," and promised, "For customers whose speed errors were confirmed, we will provide fee reductions according to established standards through individual notifications."