During the penalty waiver period that KT ran from the 31st of last month through the 13th of this month, a significant share of customers who canceled KT and moved to budget carriers ended up switching to budget carriers that use KT's network.
According to the telecom industry on the 15th, of the 312,902 customers who canceled KT during the penalty waiver period, 41,210 moved to budget carriers. Of those, about 43%, or roughly 17,700, moved to KT budget carriers that use the KT network. In detail, KT M Mobile drew about 10,000, skylife Mobile about 1,700, and small and midsize firms using the KT network absorbed about 6,000 former KT customers. Even when combining the number of KT defectors who moved to SK Telink (about 3,500), a budget carrier subsidiary of SK Telecom, and to MediaLog (about 4,000) and LG HelloVision (about 2,000), budget carrier subsidiaries of LG Uplus, the total was still smaller than the number who moved to a single company, KT M Mobile.
Why did subscribers who left KT citing hacking flock to KT budget carriers that still use the KT network? Inside and outside the industry, there is speculation that KT may have used its budget carrier subsidiaries to defend its customer base. KT's budget carrier subsidiary, KT M Mobile, offered benefits such as up to 260,000 won in payback during the penalty waiver period to attract customers. As a result, it secured the most subscribers among budget carriers. KT M Mobile said on the 14th that it surpassed 1.9 million subscribers for the first time in the industry.
KT M Mobile drew the most former KT customers (about 10,000) among the five budget carrier subsidiaries of telecom companies during the two weeks when KT waived penalties. According to the industry, KT M Mobile's monthly average net subscriber increase over the past three months was only around 2,000. On a two-week average basis, that converts to about 1,000.
A telecom industry official said, "It is an abnormal phenomenon that customers who left due to hacking damage moved the most to budget carriers that use the KT network again." In October, more than 30 of the victims of unauthorized small-amount payment hacking at KT were KT M Mobile subscribers.