Spectrum Reassignment Policy in South Korea and Its Implications

This paper introduces the details of the recent South Korean spectrum reassignment policy in 2020 and opens the discussion on its implication of the policy. In October 2021, the Ministry of Science and ICT(MSIT), a South Korean telecommunication regulation body, presented a spectrum reassignment plan (MSIT (2020)). The plan included 410MHz width of mobile spectrum used for the 2G, 3G, and LTE services in South Korea. It was the largest reassignment plan in terms of the width and the total price of the entire spectrum. As well as its scale, the decisions on reassignment policy showed noticeable features in several aspects. First, the Authority partially allowed operators to have flexibility in the usage term for spectrum, which could be seen as being diverted from the Authority’s previous course of policies. Second, the Authority associated the final reassignment price for LTE licenses with the operators’ future deployment of 5G base stations.