Switchboard, which operates the call recording application (app) Switch, won a lawsuit seeking the cancellation of a corrective order filed with the Seoul Radio Management Office under the Ministry of Science and ICT.
According to the Seoul Administrative Court on the 15th, the court ruled in favor of the plaintiff, saying, "The Seoul Radio Management Office must cancel the corrective order issued to Switchboard and bear the litigation expense."
Switch is an app that offers a call recording function like SK Telecom's "adot" and LG Uplus' "ixi-O." It has features such as call recording, text conversion, and artificial intelligence (AI) call summaries. It launched in July 2020, earlier than adot (May 2022) and ixi-O (Nov. 2024). The app is mainly used by KT users who use iPhones. Unlike SK Telecom and LG Uplus, KT does not have its own recording app, and unlike Galaxy phones, the iPhone automatically plays a voice notice saying "This call is being recorded" to the call participant when using the built-in recording function.
Earlier, in June 2024, the Seoul Radio Management Office issued a corrective order to Switchboard, saying Switch violated Article 84-2 (2) (prohibition of false display of caller ID) of the Telecommunications Business Act.
Through the Switch app, Switchboard converts an outgoing call from the caller (010 number) to Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) and places it to the recipient as an internet phone (070 number). Because the data occurs via internet phone, recording can be done without triggering the iPhone's recording notice, allowing call recording. In this process, the recipient's handset shows the call as coming from the caller's original mobile number "010-XXXX-XXXX," not the internet phone number "070-XXXX-XXXX."
The Seoul Radio Management Office determined that displaying the caller's "010" number to the recipient while placing the call via internet phone (070) violated the Telecommunications Business Act.
The Seoul Radio Management Office said, "This is a false display of caller ID prohibited by the Telecommunications Business Act," and issued a corrective order to display the "070" number, not the "010" number, as the caller ID. It also ordered, "Notify users of this fact, and prepare, implement, and submit user protection measures (refunds, service cancellations, etc.)."
However, the court found that displaying the caller's mobile phone number as is to the recipient is not a false display of caller ID.
The court said, "From the recipient's standpoint, who is actually calling matters, and the path that the call took is a secondary issue," adding, "Having the caller's phone number displayed as is aligns with the essence of the call for both the subscriber and the recipient." The court also added, "It is hard to see any practical benefit in displaying the '070' number as the caller of the call."
The court further said, "After completing an on-site inspection of the service in 2021, the Seoul Radio Management Office expressed an official view that there were no particular violations, yet it still issued this corrective order," adding, "This disposition violates the principle of protection of trust."