Over 2,000 Telecommunications Service Dispute Mediation Applications Filed Last Year... Record High

Last year, the number of mediation requests related to telecommunications service disputes surpassed 2,000, setting a new all-time high.

The Broadcasting, Media, and Telecommunications Committee announced on March 4 that, according to the '2025 Telecommunications Dispute Mediation Requests and Processing Results' received by the Telecommunications Dispute Mediation Committee, a total of 2,123 mediation requests were submitted last year. This represents an increase of 590 cases (38.5%) compared to the previous year. This is the highest number since the telecommunications dispute mediation system was introduced in 2019.

The number of applications has steadily increased from 155 in 2019 to 572 in 2020, 1,170 in 2021, 1,060 in 2022, 1,259 in 2023, and 1,533 in 2024. The committee analyzed that this trend reflects both greater public awareness of the system and ongoing issues such as cyber breaches by telecommunications companies last year.

However, the dispute resolution rate last year was 79.3%, a decrease of 3.6 percentage points from the previous year. The overall resolution rate was affected because the companies did not accept the mediation proposals related to the SK Telecom cyber breach and the cancellation of KT's Galaxy S25 pre-orders.

By type of dispute, contract-related disputes accounted for the largest share at 1,122 cases (52.8%). This was followed by issues related to explanations or notifications of important matters at 478 cases (22.5%), other types at 359 cases (16.9%), service quality at 143 cases (6.7%), and terms of service at 21 cases (1%). For both wireless and wired sectors, contract-related disputes made up the largest proportion, with 655 cases (45.3%) in wireless and 467 cases (69.1%) in wired services.

By operator, in the wireless sector, SK Telecom had the highest number of mediation requests at 507 cases (35%), with 1.6 requests per 100,000 subscribers. KT followed with 307 cases and 1.5 requests per 100,000 subscribers, while LG Uplus had 276 cases and 1.3 requests per 100,000 subscribers.

In the wired sector, LG Uplus had the most cases at 185 (27.4%), followed by KT with 167 cases, SK Broadband with 121 cases, and SK Telecom with 74 cases. The number of requests per 100,000 subscribers was highest for LG Uplus at 3.1, followed by SK Broadband at 2.3, SK Telecom at 2.1, and KT at 0.9.

Regarding dispute resolution rates, SK Telecom had the highest rate in the wireless sector at 83.1%, followed by LG Uplus at 73.1% and KT at 72.1%. In the wired sector, both SK Broadband and KT recorded the highest rates at 83.3%.

Kim Jongcheol, Chairperson of the Broadcasting, Media, and Telecommunications Committee, stated, "As telecommunications services become more complex and diverse, the number of dispute applications is increasing significantly." He added, "We will promptly organize the 4th Telecommunications Dispute Mediation Committee and pursue improvements such as the introduction of a class action dispute mediation system."

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