The Analysis of Effect of New Mobile Number System in Korean Mobile Market

이동통신시장 번호제도 개편 효과 분석

We analyzed the effect of 6-month lagged number portability policy and introduction of common number among carriers on Korean mobile market. Our result shows that the policy change contributed to both the increase in number of mobile subscribers and decrease in dominant carrier's market share. We found that unified prefix among mobile operators is more effective than the lagged number portability policy. The carriers' profit, however, decreased a lot due to excessive marketing expenditure. We also estimated market shares of carriers up to year 2005 when full number portability policy is adopted. The results show that dominant carrier's monopolistic power will be recovered by the end of 2005 implying government's number policy itself cannot guarantee the effective competition in Korean mobile market.