• KDI Journal of Economic Policy
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• v.32 no.3
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• pp.101-137
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• 2010

This paper defines markets relating to each paid broadcasting service by applying the test method of critical sales loss to the results of survey to the paid service subscribers. The result confirms the existence of a meaningful competitive relationship--in terms of the Competition Law--among all paid broadcasting services included in this study, or at least analog cable broadcasting, digital cable broadcasting, and real time IPTV(Internet Protocol TV) service. This indicates that current regulations which are being applied to cable TV, satellite broadcasting, and IPTV are actually discriminatory. Based on these analysis results, this paper suggests that the main attention for the improvement of regulations should be focused on regulations which are differently applied to different paid service providers. In particular, Article 20 in the Internet Multimedia Broadcasting Law is interpreted as defining the real-time IPTV as an independent market, thereby having leeway to harm fair competition among different paid service providers. Therefore, that article needs to change to give the right of equal access to contents to all the competing paid service providers. Furthermore, to put teeth in the contents equal access rule, most popular pay channels need to be designated as target contents of the rule. As for the market-share limitation regulations, the paper suggests that an upper limit on the market share should be set based on the total number of subscribers of all the competing paid services and the same limit applied to all the competing paid service providers.