'Wi-Fi=Free'... Disappearing Paid Wi-Fi Plans

SKT 'T Wi-Fi Zone' Plan to End Next Month

SK Telecom's 'T Wi-Fi Zone' paid Wi-Fi plan, which allows users to access paid Wi-Fi, will be discontinued in January next year. This is due to changes in the telecommunications usage environment, where the formula 'Wi-Fi = free' has been established in all places such as public spaces and various stores.

On the 5th, SKT announced, "The paid T Wi-Fi Zone products, including the monthly subscription and one-time usage tickets, will end on January 31, 2024," adding, "As a result, new subscriptions will be suspended from December 31, 2023." SKT mobile phone and tablet PC plan subscribers will continue to use the T Wi-Fi Zone service for free.

SKT introduced a paid Wi-Fi plan in 2012. Initially, the service was provided free of charge to subscribers of all carriers, but as the number of users increased, traffic surged. To manage service quality, SKT offered free Wi-Fi to its customers and separately launched a paid plan. Smartphone and tablet PC users subscribed to SKT's basic plans could use Wi-Fi for free, but other devices with Wi-Fi access had to purchase a T Wi-Fi Zone monthly subscription (5,000 KRW per month) or one-time usage tickets (1,000 KRW for 3 hours, 2,000 KRW for 24 hours) to use the service.

However, the situation changed as the mobile usage environment evolved. With the spread of smartphones, cafes, restaurants, shopping malls, and other places now provide free Wi-Fi to visitors as a basic service. The government has also installed free public Wi-Fi networks nationwide. By this year, public Wi-Fi has been established in 58,000 public locations across the country. The cumulative number of public Wi-Fi connections last year reached 9.2 billion. The traffic generated by these users amounted to 66 PB (petabytes), equivalent to watching 57.96 million HD-quality videos.

Changes in the telecommunications fee structure also had an impact. Unlike the early 2010s plans that provided small amounts of data, with the maturity of LTE and the introduction of 5G, traffic increased, and large-volume and unlimited data plans became common. It is convenient to use smartphone tethering (sharing mobile data with other devices) without needing to subscribe to a separate plan. Plans for second devices such as tablet PCs have also been launched. There is no longer an incentive to pay for Wi-Fi usage.

Recently, it is known that actual users of the paid service were rare. An industry insider said, "There were fewer than 100 subscribers to the paid Wi-Fi plan."

Meanwhile, as SKT ends sales of the 'T Wi-Fi Zone' plan, among the three major telecom companies, only KT continues to sell the paid Wi-Fi plan 'WiFi Flash.'