[Asia Economy Reporter Eunju Lee] Regulatory legislative movements aimed at ensuring data mobility and interoperability to promote market competition are being pursued by major competition authorities. In South Korea, the Fair Trade Commission has just begun discussions on measures that can promote multi-homing (users utilizing multiple services or easily switching between them) as part of its antitrust regulatory policy.
According to the European Parliament website on the 30th, the European Union (EU) has completed the legislative process for the Digital Markets Act (DMA), which includes imposing data mobility obligations on gatekeeper platform operators, and the designation process for regulated entities is scheduled to begin in May next year. The Digital Markets Act designates platform companies that meet certain criteria as ‘gatekeepers’ and aims to preemptively regulate unfair practices unique to platform companies, such as data exploitation, self-preferencing, and most-favored-nation treatment.
The bill also defines acts by gatekeeper platforms that restrict switching to other services as a type of unfair practice. It imposes an obligation to provide consumers with effective means to transfer their data. In the United States, among five antitrust bills introduced in the House of Representatives last June, the ‘Augmenting Compatibility and Competition by Enabling Service Switching Act’ (ACCESS Act) imposes obligations on designated platforms to ensure data mobility and interoperability.
The background for these bills lies in concerns that big tech companies’ data monopolies prevent the emergence of new competitors. For example, Facebook Messenger users lose data such as friend lists, chat data, and photos when switching to other SNS platforms. From the user’s perspective, the higher these switching costs, the more hesitant they are to switch services or multi-home. Therefore, major overseas competition authorities view data monopolization as ultimately limiting market competition and are increasingly aware of the need to promote smooth data mobility and interoperability.
In South Korea, the Fair Trade Commission also recognizes that ensuring data mobility and interoperability is essential to revitalizing market competition. On the 28th, the FTC analyzed the competitive situation in the cloud market and pointed out that the habitual incompatibility between technologies and practices that make data transfer difficult in the large cloud platform market are restricting market competition. It announced that it will establish antitrust policies to enhance competitive pressure. An FTC official explained, “We are just beginning to consider specifically what direction regulations to promote competition in the platform market can take.”
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