Asymmetric regulation for fair competition: Focusing on the impact of the staggered MNP in Korea

Since 1980, telecoms sector monopolistically owned by government faced structural change to the competition regime with the deregulation trend due to rapid growth of demand. But telecoms sector has still high entry barriers constructed for a long time. Most regulatory parties worldwide tried to adopt several remedies for fair competition among market leader and new entrants. In this context, asymmetric regulation has imposed to the significant market player to prevent abusing market power. In the case of the Korean telecommunications service market, asymmetric regulation has strongly implemented to the market leader. The government imposed mobile number portability (MNP) policy on carriers asymmetrically. Number portability in Korean mobile telecoms has the unique characteristics of the “staggered” introduction that MNP was gradually adopted for each carrier with time difference of 6 months. We empirically assessed the performance of the MNP experience in Korea with the social network analysis. As a result, we concluded that the previous staggered MNP, one of the controversial asymmetric regulations, had not contributed to promote the fair competition among carriers based on the analysis of the centrality and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS). Thus Korean regulatory authority needs to adjust existing rigid asymmetric regulation regime as tentative conclusions for imposing asymmetric remedies in telecommunications.