South Korea's mobile carriers have pushed back against a Japanese government study that found smartphone service in Seoul to be the most expensive among major global cities, calling the findings an arbitrary statistical error. The industry argues that Korean mobile fees rank in the middle of the pack internationally.
International comparisons of Korean telecom costs vary widely depending on methodology, according to industry officials and related data on the 1st. The dispute stems from a recent survey by Japan's Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications on domestic and international price gaps in telecommunications services.
Last month, the Japanese ministry compared 4G and 5G mobile rates across six cities: Seoul, Tokyo, New York, London, Paris and Dusseldorf, Germany.
The study measured what consumers pay at each market's largest carrier by subscriber share, broken down by data allowance, using the cheapest new-contract rates as of the end of last year. For 4G plans with 20 gigabytes of monthly data, SK Telecom (017670) in Seoul charged 6,916 yen, or 60,846 won, the highest among the cities surveyed.
Methodology Shifts the Rankings
Korean carriers say the survey design fails to reflect actual price levels in the country. The Korea Telecommunications Operators Association said the comparison was artificially tailored to Japanese carriers' pricing patterns, leaving Korean rates looking excessively high.
A comparison released in February by Switzerland's Federal Office of Communications, built on OECD methodology, produced the opposite result. Examining the lowest rates in each country among plans available to new subscribers as of August 2025 that met each basket's conditions, Korea came in cheapest among 38 countries at 1.7 Swiss francs a month for a basket of 30 calls, 10 text messages and 500 megabytes of data.
Korea ranked third-cheapest at 3.4 francs for 100 calls, 20 texts and 2 gigabytes, and second-cheapest among 34 countries at 4.6 francs for a high-volume basket offering unlimited voice and text plus 20 gigabytes of data.
The gap between the two studies comes down to method. The Japanese ministry used the flagship brand of each city's largest carrier by market share as the representative plan. The OECD approach, by contrast, draws on multiple major operators as well as discount brands meeting certain conditions, then identifies the cheapest rate satisfying each usage tier.
Even the OECD method has drawn criticism for the limits of cross-border price comparison. It identifies the lowest-priced product meeting a fixed voice and data allowance rather than measuring what subscribers actually spend on average. Results can also shift depending on usage patterns in each country, whether bundled and family discounts are counted, and whether mobile virtual network operators and secondary brands are included alongside mobile network operators.
Korean carriers maintain the country's mobile fees are by no means expensive by global standards. In the OECD's Digital Economy Outlook 2024, released in November 2024, a comparison of mobile rates across 38 member countries as of August 2023 put Korea fourth-cheapest at $7.3 a month on a purchasing power parity basis for 100 calls and 500 megabytes, fourth at $7.6 for 300 calls and 1 gigabyte, and second at $7.6 for 900 calls and 2 gigabytes. Korea placed 10th at $14.9 for 900 calls and 10 gigabytes, landing in the top 10 cheapest in all four tiers.
