KT Telecom is paying ₩35 to ₩40 billion for massive network outage

KT Telecom is set to pay its subscribers as compensation for the massive network outage last week. The company will have to shell out from ₩35 to ₩40 billion or $29 to $33 million for this issue.

As per The Korea Herald, a press conference was held, and KT executives admitted that the extensive service interruption that happened on Oct. 25 was due to human error. The company humbly acknowledged that the incident was caused by careless negligence and promised to be more attentive by going back to basics so it could regain the subscribers' confidence once again.

"We deeply apologize for causing inconvenience and have prepared realistic prevention measures and compensation packages to never allow this to happen again," Seo Chang Seok, KT's executive director, said during the press conference on Monday, Nov. 1.

It was mentioned that Seo would also lead the team that was formed to carry out the task of network transformation so the company would avoid a similar mistake in the future. To compensate its subscribers, KT is planning to waive the network usage fee for the month of November.

The exemption for the said fee will be applicable to all of the telecom's subscribers, including those who are subscribed to wired and wireless broadband internet or IP-type phone services. It was revealed that the firm made the decision to compensate users for the downtime last week that lasted for 89 minutes by 10 times.

This means that KT Telecom will be exempting 15 hours of service fees from the monthly bill. There is no exact amount since it will depend on the bill of each subscriber's subscription plan. For instance, those who signed up for the 50,000 plan will be given a 1,000 discount.

The entire cost of KT's compensation was estimated to be around ₩35 billion and up. The company will be setting up a call center and a website dedicated to answering calls for complaints in the next two weeks.

The Korea Times reported that the service failure last week also disabled stock trading by individuals. Debit and credit card payments on delivery and ordering platforms were also affected, and taxi drivers had difficulties in navigation services and receiving calls, so there was a lot of damage, so these will be compensated.

"We ask that the service subscribers consider that this was the best possible solution, given the plan needs to be fair and drawn up as fast as possible," Park Hyo-Il, KT's head of customer division, told the press.