South Korea Telecommunication Market Report (2020-2025)

Market Overview

South Korea Telecom Market has witnessed strong growth in recent years and is expected to have continued growth over the forecast period to 2025. The growth in the industry is mainly due to increasing urban population with rising adoption of the mobile phones that supports 3G, 4G and 5G services across the country. Telecom sector is further expected to have strong growth over the forecast period with rising adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) in the sector that connect with wired and wireless broadband.

Some of the 2G networks have already been closed, and all of the major 2G/3G platforms are expected to be shut by the end of 2025. By 2029 the majority of mobile connections will be on 5G. The government has published definitive wireline voice and broadband subscription data for 2017; It is expected that hundreds of million fixed broadband connections by 2025, versus over tens of million wireline voice connections, ensuring that mobile will be the principal form of connection.

Covid-19 Impact

Covid-19 pandemic has less or negligible impact on the South Korea telecom industry, though, the telecom sector plans to delay its upcoming spectrum auctions due to the Covid-19 pandemic. In March 2020, business hours broadband consumption has increased, as the country adjusted to life with Covid-19. The telecom sector has witnessed growth in weekday viewership, movie rentals and purchases. Live viewing is increased by 15% and free video-on-demand is increased by 25% during the week as more people are in lockdown staying at home. As expected, sports viewing is decreased due to events were on hold or delayed. However, this impact has been complemented by an increase in News and Kids viewers.

Market Dynamics

The growth in South Korea Telecom Market has been driven by increasing population, communication service, and rising adoption of smartphone services. The growth would be further supported by Regulatory authorities, which play a major role in adopting a 5G network in the country.

5G network plays a key role in enabling autonomous cars, and customer services including physical infrastructure to contractual agreements. However, 5G network adoption may face hurdles from public authorities and organizations as 5G network might lead to technical challenges and pose a threat to public safety and health. The key technical challenge for a challenge for adopting 5G’s bands tends to have limited range and lower penetration rate, which hampered the pilot tests. Besides technical issues, adapting issues such as overheating of some 5G devices while using may lead to the slower adoption of 5G network services.

South Korea Telecom Market Scenario

South Korea telecom market has witnessed strong growth in recent years and is expected to attain stronger growth over the forecast period to 2025. The growth in the industry is mainly driven by increasing population, communication service, and rising adoption of smartphone services. The major part of the market growth in South Korea is attained by premium connectivity and content services in the country. However, consumers enjoy robust and forward-looking regulatory regimes for these services. Although Telecom service revenues were increased as users are mainly adopting work-from-home practises and are spending more time streaming video, games and other forms of entertainment being at home during this pandemic era.

Based on the service type, South Korea telecom market has experienced major growth from Value-added services. The growth in Value-added services is mainly due to increasing subscribers in the emerging economies and growing demand from network operators to offer efficient mobile services. Based on the transmission type, still, wireline is accounted for the major market across the world and is expected to have continued growth over the forecast period, the growth in wireline is mainly due to increased demand for wired communication services.

The competition in the industry is highly consolidated with few players. Leaders continue to enjoy significant market share at high competition and racing for innovation ranging from mass-market entertainment to high-end business connectivity. The key strategies adopted in the industry are introducing new and affordable products and services, mergers, acquisitions, expansion of services or network and bandwidth.

Telecom Investment Scenario

Capital expenditure on the infrastructure was decreased as network deployments were slowed to ensure engineers' health and safety during the pandemic. Increasing regulatory involvement determined by political opportunists rather than market or consumer needs is likely to hamper existing and new investors activities in the South Korea telecom market in the coming years.