Data-heavy services like YouTube are apparently costing a South Korean Internet Service Provider serious money, and the ISP doesn’t want to take it any longer.
Speaking to Reuters in an interview published last night, Kim Taehwan, vice president of KT, Korea’s largest ISP, said that his company is tired of “free riding” Internet streaming services that consume huge amounts of data and don’t pay it a dime to do so.
“We wish to set a rule that we can similarly apply to each platform operator that gives data-heavy content material as the ones services threaten to black out our community,” Taehwan informed Reuters. “They must pay for the use of our network.”
Taehwan proposed an option through which companies may percentage a portion in their advertising revenue with KT. The ISP could even be open to setting up network-usage charges.
KT is first focusing its efforts on Internet-enabled TVs that allow users to stream programming over the Web. Once deals are struck, KT hopes to extend such arrangements with “data-heavy services such as YouTube.”
Earlier this month, in step with Reuters, KT blocked get right of entry to to programs to be had on Samsung’s internet-enabled televisions that eat quite a lot of data. however Samsung may not be the only tv maker in KT’s crosshairs. Panasonic, LG, Vizio, and numerous different television makers are providing web-enabled televisions, understanding that giving internet get right of entry to to shoppers in the living room is a very powerful step in continuing to draw them to their sets.
Battles between heavy data users and service providers is nothing new for American companies. Last year, Netflix, which consumes a large amount of data, butted heads with ISPs over the costs its streaming service carries with it. ISPs argue that Netflix should pay those costs–something Netflix flatly rejects.
we expectk the price sharing among web video suppliers and ISPs will have to be that we have to haul the bits to the quite a lot of neighborhood entrance doors that the ISPs operate,” Netflix CEO Reed Hastings mentioned final year.