통신법상 금지행위 제도의 개선방향 ― 규제경제학의 관점 ―

Abstract

The role of ex-post regulation in the telecommunication industry has been more important with the trend of market maturity. For the purposes of fair competition and user protection in the telecommunication markets, Article 50 of the Telecommunications Business Act in Korea prescribes certain acts as "prohibited acts." This paper tries to provide the improvement scheme of the regulation of prohibited acts in the Korean Telecommunication markets by examining the clauses of prohibited acts from the perspective of regulatory economics. The main finding of this paper is summarized as follows: First, it is necessary to re-establish the classification system of prohibited acts by examining the rationale of regulation on each (sub)type of prohibited acts. In particular, it is inappropriate to classify bundling and discrimination into the type of acts reducing user benefits, because they must be evaluated by the criterion of fair competition as well. Second, the existing clauses of user protection should be supplemented by prescribing new sub-types of prohibited acts in the case that the existing sub-type of prohibited acts cannot successfully include newly appearing behaviors that potentially infringe on user benefits with the trend of technological innovation and convergence. Third, it is necessary to identify all relevant (sub)types of anti-competitive behaviors that are desirable to be in the boundary of sector-specific regulator's ex-post regulation in terms of expertise and synergy effects. The existing clauses of fair competition should be expanded or revised so that the sector-specific regulator can regulate some important anti-competitive behaviors in telecommunication markets, such as vertical restraints, predatory pricing and margin squeeze. Also, the clauses of fair competition should be expanded so that they can be applied to regulate anti-competitive behaviors that occur between telecommunication operators and non-telecom operators such as contents providers or telecom-facility manufactures.