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The Ministry of Information
and Communication introduced the unified
cellular phone access code number 010 in
January 2004 as part of asymmetric control
of the cellular phone services providers.
According to the Fair Trade Act of Korea,
the regulator can take measures to prevent
any operator from taking more than fifty
percent of the market share.
In this context, the government
took the measure againt the largest operator,
SK Telecom Co., but in favor of the other
two operators, KTF and LG Telecom Co.
The new system is to allow
subscribers to switch carriers without changing
their existing phone numbers. Before the
government's decision to introduce code
portability, in which the new cellular phone
subscribers are given the 010 accesss code,
KS Telecom users were assigned 011 access
code, while KTF and LG Telecom suscribers
were given 018 and 019, respectively. In
the new system each subscriber also has
an option to choose either the unified code
(010) or respective access code of either
of the three service carriers as before.
The number of 010 users
reached 4.4 million in of early May 2004,
among which SK Telecom users leading the
pack with 1.79 million, while those of KTF
and LG Telecom reached 1.66 million and
0.99 million, respectively.
As of mid May, SK Telecom
still boasted of 1.85 million subscribers
among Korea's 35million cellular phone users,
with the rest taken by the other operators,
11.5 million by KTF and 5.5 million by LG Telecom.
In a related movement, government's
patent regulating body, Intellectual PropertyTribunal,
in mid May turned down SK Telecom's claim
to exclusive right for its trademark "Speed
011" dealing a blow to the company,
which has relied on the brand's popularity
to lure new subsbribers to the unified 010
access code. The decision was made as to
the complaint compiled by KTF last November
over its rival's use of "Speed 011",
claiming that the competitor should not
hold the exclusive right to the access code
011 now that the government has decided
on the number portability.
In a separate complaint,
KTF demanded that Korea Intellectual Property
Office reject SK Telecom's application to
register "Speed 010" as a trademark.
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