Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

CTOnews.com, Oct. 21 (Xinhua)-- South Korea's parliament on Friday hotly debated a legislative proposal that would require global content providers such as Netflix and Google, owned by Alphabet, to pay for the Internet.

This is similar to the measures tried by some European countries, which want the European Commission (European Commission) to pass legislation to ensure that large technology companies partially fund telecoms infrastructure in the face of a surge in video streaming and other data use.

South Korea has proposed various versions of legislation in the hope that these companies will pay "fair" prices, according to Reuters. The hearing is expected to end later on Friday, but the proposal is still some way from entering the next stage of the legislative process.

"Google and Netflix account for more than 1/3 of domestic traffic... international companies should consider this issue more actively." Others disagree, saying that charging large technology companies could mean that they will eventually be passed on to users, weakening South Koreans' space for content creation.

"while it is trying to protect a small number of domestic Internet service providers, it may lead to the collapse of domestic content providers," said Jung Chung-lai, chairman of the South Korean National Assembly Committee in charge of the issue. " Google's YouTube has launched a campaign against the bill, and more than 259824 people have signed a petition against the bill, according to campaign group Opennet.

Kyoung Hoon Kim, director of Google Korea, told lawmakers: "it is necessary to conduct an in-depth review of the way the business is run." He was referring to what would happen if such legislation was introduced.

Liz Chung, director of Netflix Korea, said her company was looking for ways to deal with surging traffic. "We are developing a number of technical measures to make effective use of the network and respond appropriately to traffic growth."

SK, a South Korean internet provider, has taken to court to get big technology companies to pay. SK declined to comment. Kim Hyun-kyung, a professor at Seoul University of Science and Technology, said: "[legislation] may result in a series of consequences such as content providers passing on costs to end users."

CTOnews.com has learned that European regulators are preparing Google, Meta and Netflix to bear some of the costs of telecoms networks, a plan that has been welcomed by large telecoms operators, but some smaller operators have warned that it will distort the telecoms market and hurt competition.

YouTube has 41.8 million active users in South Korea, compared with a total of 51.6 million, according to data provider Mobile Index. They spent a total of 1.38 billion hours using YouTube in September.

Global mobile data traffic reached 67 exabytes per month by the end of 2021 and is expected to reach 282 exabytes by 2027, Sweden's Ericsson said in a report in June. Video traffic accounts for about 69% of traffic and is expected to rise to 79% by 2027.

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