Government Publishes Commentary on 5G Era Net Neutrality Policy Amendments

Published One Year After Last Year's Policy Announcement

[Asia Economy Reporter Cha Min-young] A commentary explaining the revised net neutrality policy in line with the emergence of new ICT services in the 5G era, such as autonomous vehicles, has been released. This includes compliance requirements for special service providers and regulatory standards for zero-rating practices.

The Ministry of Science and ICT announced on the 16th that it has published and distributed "Understanding Net Neutrality Policy," a policy commentary related to the "Net Neutrality Policy Direction in the 5G Era" announced last December.

Net neutrality is the principle that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) must treat lawful internet traffic equally regardless of its content, type, or provider.

The net neutrality guidelines revised last year include definitions of special services for new converged service provision, limitations on special service provision, government information request authority, and quality inspection rights.

The newly prepared policy commentary contains detailed definitions of special services, conditions for providing special services to maintain general internet quality, items for which the Ministry of Science and ICT can request transparency-related information from telecom companies, zero-rating regulatory principles, and key Q&A.

One of the key Q&A responses regarding "whether priority transmission of traffic for specific uses such as IPTV is allowed" is "Allowed if the definition and provision conditions of special services are met according to the guidelines." The response related to "whether network slicing technology is permitted" is "Permitted, but applying network slicing technology to services that can be sufficiently provided over the general internet to evade net neutrality is an unreasonable discriminatory act."

Minister Lim Hye-sook of the Ministry of Science and ICT stated, "This commentary was created to help the public understand the 'Net Neutrality Guidelines,' which were the result of intense debates among stakeholders and social consensus. I hope this commentary will strengthen cooperation between telecom operators and content/platform providers and serve as a stepping stone for the healthy and sustainable development of the ICT ecosystem."

The policy commentary will be available for free download and viewing on the Ministry of Science and ICT and the Korea Information Society Development Institute websites starting from the 17th.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.