The 20-day business suspension for SK Telecom, the country’s top mobile carrier, began on Thursday.
The company is banned from receiving new customers from Jan. 31 to Feb. 21. SKT is also prohibited from accepting subscribers of its competitors ― KT and LG Uplus ― during the period.
The business suspension, as well as fines, was given to the nation’s three telecoms by the Korea Communications Commission in response to massive illegal subsidies in the latter half of last year.
Without the option of selling the latest smartphones to new subscribers, SKT will have no choice but to concentrate on its existing customers.
In that vein, it announced a scheme this week to provide additional discounts to loyal customers that have been with SKT for over 18 months.
The plan, which was launched Thursday, enables SKT subscribers to buy new handsets with discounts totaling up to 270,000 won. Together with other packages, customers can get more than 400,000 won in discounts when switching their handsets running on SKT networks.
Smartphones such as the iPhone 5, Galaxy S3, Galaxy Note 2 and Galaxy Pop are among the available models.
The firm also said that it exclusively released Samsung’s feature flip phone dubbed “Wise 2” on Thursday to secure its group of 2G phone owners.
“Since we can’t lure new customers, we’re planning to focus on our existing customers. We have no other choice,” said an SKT official.
The business ban for the industrial leader, which comes after LG Uplus’ suspension, is likely to trigger a war between the other two rivals to lure each other’s customers by laying out bigger benefits.
SKT took about 80,000 customers from LG Uplus during its business suspension from Jan. 7-Jan. 30. In total, LG Uplus is estimated to have lost more than 140,000 customers, which means KT lured away about 60,000.
“This is most definitely a chance for the other two mobile carriers to increase their market share,” said an industry insider.
“However, it is assumed that SKT will not just sit down and watch and that it will come up with new methods to secure its existing customers.”
By Cho Ji-hyun (
sharon@heraldcorp.com)
