The government is strengthening its response to unfair sales practices after the abolition of the Mobile Device Distribution Act. From next month, it will examine mobile carriers’ incentive payment structures and will intensively inspect conduct that forces or induces customers to sign up for high-priced plans and add-on services.

The Broadcast Media Telecommunications Commission on Sept. 16 held its 35th plenary meeting of 2026 and deliberated and approved measures and a detailed implementation plan aimed at creating a sound distribution environment for mobile communications devices and related products.

The measures are follow-up steps to prevent unfair discrimination against users and incomplete sales following the abolition of the Mobile Device Distribution Act in July last year. The commission will重点적으로 check whether incentives from carriers and manufacturers are used to discriminate among users or to induce sign-ups to specific plans.

The commission will focus inspections from October on the structure of incentives rather than the amount of subsidies.

From next month, the commission will monitor the total amount of incentives the three mobile carriers pay to agencies and retailers, their payment criteria and incentive gaps by subscription conditions. Incentives paid by manufacturers to carriers or distribution networks will also be included in the inspection scope.

It will in particular closely examine practices that use incentives to effectively force sign-ups to high-priced plans or add-on services. Key targets include overlapping incentive payments only to high-priced plan subscribers, reflecting the attraction rate of a specific plan in agency evaluations, and reducing incentives or commissions when customers sign up for mid- to low-priced plans.

According to the commission, as of November last year, 55.2 percent of new subscribers of the three carriers signed up for high-priced plans costing 80,000 won or more per month. In a Korea Consumer Federation survey in January, 54.5 percent of unlimited-plan users were found to use 100 GB or less of data per month in practice.

The measures do not reintroduce a cap on subsidies themselves. The commission’s policy is to allow subsidies to increase through competition while distinguishing and managing whether operators use them to unfairly concentrate benefits on specific users or plans.

The commission will also strengthen the provision of information on subsidies and plans. For cases in which customers agreed at sign-up to maintain a specific plan for a certain period, it will push from the first quarter of 2027 to send separate alerts by text message or social media when that period ends. This is intended to prevent users from continuing to pay unnecessarily expensive plans because they miss the time when they can switch to a cheaper plan without paying a refund.

It will revamp rules so consumers can compare additional subsidies offered by retailers on their own. The commission plans to 마련할 a standard form by March next year that displays additional subsidies by flagship handsets and major plans in a uniform format. The move follows criticism that vague expressions used in online sales such as "0 won," "maximum subsidy" and "secret subsidy" make it difficult for users to understand actual conditions.

It will also establish guidelines on false, exaggerated and deceptive advertising in the mobile communications sector by March next year. It will detail types of ads that differ from facts, inflate benefits without evidence, or hide or downplay key conditions such as card discounts, and use them for self-regulation by operators and standards for inspections of legal violations.

The commission will also strengthen a system for users to directly report damage suffered during sales. It will activate a participatory reporting scheme that provides a small reward to actual subscribers who submit supporting materials on issues such as support payments that differ from advertisements, failure to state support amounts in contracts and improper enrollment in add-on services. The existing Mobile Phone Unfair Practices Reporting Center will also be reorganised in the fourth quarter of this year into a Mobile Phone User Damage Reporting Center focused on reports of user inconvenience and harm.

It will also strengthen sellers’ responsibility. A seller information registration and management system introduced in May for new retailers will be expanded from next month to existing retailers. The measure aims to reduce cases where sales staff promise subsidies or exemption of remaining instalment payments and then leave the company, making it difficult to determine responsibility.

The commission will also form a distribution environment improvement consultative body involving experts, consumer groups, carriers, manufacturers and distribution-related organisations. The body will hold plenary meetings twice a year and quarterly subcommittee meetings by area, including mobile communications, budget carriers, manufacturers, users and distribution networks, to discuss market monitoring results and improvement tasks.

Commission Chairman Jong-cheol Kim (김종철) said the measures aim to overhaul market order with a focus on user benefits and rights and to boldly eliminate unfair practices and customs in the market through their establishment and implementation.