Google, Netflix beneath scrutiny in South Korea over community charges By Reuters

By Joyce Lee

SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea’s parliament noticed heated debate on Friday over proposed laws to make world content material suppliers corresponding to Netflix (NASDAQ:) and Alphabet (NASDAQ:)’s Google pay South Korean community charges.

The deliberations mirror makes an attempt in Europe by some nations that need the European Fee to give you laws that ensures Massive Tech companies partly finance telecoms infrastructure, as video streaming and different knowledge utilization surges.

Numerous variations of laws have been proposed in South Korea within the hope of constructing the businesses pay what supporters of the reform name a good worth.

The listening to is predicted to be concluded late on Friday however the proposal remains to be seen as a way away from transferring ahead to the subsequent stage of the legislative course of.

“Google and Netflix account for greater than a 3rd of home site visitors … It befits world firms to overview the difficulty extra proactively,” lawmaker Hong Suk-joon stated throughout the listening to.

Others disagreed, saying imposing charges on the large tech firms may imply they might increase their very own charges and undermine South Korean content material creators.

“It dangers the collapse of home content material suppliers whereas making an attempt to guard a small variety of home web service suppliers,” stated Jung Chung-rae, head of the parliament committee overseeing the difficulty.

Google’s YouTube has campaigned in opposition to the invoice and greater than 259,824 folks have signed a petition opposing the laws, in keeping with activist group Opennet.

“It is going to be essential to deeply overview the way in which the enterprise is run,” Google South Korea’s nation director Kyoung Hoon Kim instructed lawmakers, referring to what would occur if such laws was launched.

Liz Chung, a director at Netflix’s South Korean unit, stated her firm was searching for methods to deal with surging site visitors.

“We’re growing a variety of technical measures to effectively utilise networks and reply appropriately to site visitors progress,” Chung stated.

In Europe, a regulators’ plan to make Google, Meta and Netflix bear some telecoms community prices has been welcomed by massive telecoms operators, however smaller ones warned it might distort the telecoms market and hurt competitors.

It prices cash to ascertain and keep subsea cables and infrastructure that deliver knowledge from one place to a different and the exploding recognition of world video content material has raised the prices of bringing knowledge saved abroad, consultants stated.

YouTube has 41.8 million lively South Korean customers, out of a inhabitants of 51.6 million. They used YouTube for a mixed 1.38 billion hours in September, in keeping with knowledge supplier Cellular Index.

International cellular knowledge site visitors reached 67 exabytes monthly by the tip of 2021, projected to succeed in 282 exabytes in 2027, Sweden’s Ericsson (BS:) stated in a June report. Video site visitors accounts for about 69% of the site visitors, and is predicted to rise to 79% in 2027.

South Korean community supplier SK Broadband has gone to courtroom within the hope of constructing Massive Tech pay charges.

SK declined to remark.

“(Laws) may have repercussions together with content material suppliers passing on prices to end-users,” stated Kim Hyun-kyung, professor at Seoul Nationwide College of Science and Expertise.