Korean residents will find it easier to recover communal electricity fees for apartment and villa internet equipment that had been quietly slipping out of their pockets. The Ministry of Science and ICT (MSIT) began operating a compensation application management system and a dedicated center for communal housing internet equipment electricity fees starting Wednesday.
Apartments, villas, and other communal housing buildings contain "internet distributors" that send internet signals to each household. These devices are installed in communal terminal boxes or central communication rooms and draw on the building's shared electricity.
In principle, these electricity fees should be paid by the telecommunications carriers or cable TV broadcasters providing the service. However, in some communal housing buildings, the cost had been charged to residents. The money was being withdrawn through maintenance fees without residents' knowledge. This improper practice has been pointed out repeatedly through the National Assembly and the media.
The scale of communal electricity used by telecommunications carriers is significant. According to data from the National Assembly's Science, ICT, Broadcasting and Communications Committee, communal electricity usage charges paid to Korea Electric Power Corporation under building owners' names reached 42.1 billion won for KT, 29.6 billion won for SK Broadband, 19.7 billion won for LG Uplus, and 12.1 billion won for LG HelloVision as of 2024.
These figures tally only the amounts properly metered and settled among electricity charges incurred in operating communal communication equipment such as internet distributors. They do not include unauthorized electricity usage that was connected to communal power without separate metering and passed on through maintenance fees.
To resolve the communal electricity fee proxy-payment issue, MSIT formed a task force last November. The four major telecommunications companies—KT, SK Broadband, LG Uplus, and LG HelloVision—participated, as did regional comprehensive cable broadcasters including Jeju Broadcasting and Seokyeong Broadcasting. They conducted a full survey of 144,000 facilities nationwide (110,000 locations on a building basis) and finalized this compensation plan.
With the system now in operation, the compensation application and processing procedures will be unified in one place. Previously, management entities had to inquire and apply individually through each operator's call center, but going forward, communal electricity management entities will no longer need to make calls in multiple directions.
Management entities such as apartment management chiefs or villa administrators can register by checking the building's internet equipment and then accessing the compensation application management system. By integrating application channels that had been scattered across operators, the system aims to speed up compensation processing and also keep records of equipment management history.
The compensation application management system is used not only for compensation applications but also for operators' compensation and contract management, management entity information management, on-site survey history management, and management of newly built equipment. Through this, MSIT plans to continuously manage the operating status of internet equipment to prevent similar cases from recurring. The dedicated center handles consultations on eligibility and guidance on using the application service. It supports management entities who are not familiar with internet use so they can apply easily.
MSIT plans to expand region-focused publicity through cooperation with local governments and to continue the nationwide full survey. It plans to review the progress of the survey and compensation monthly through the task force. Choi Woo-hyuk, head of MSIT's Information Protection and Network Policy Office, stressed, "With the dedicated center and system in operation, we will accelerate the refund of communal electricity fees," adding, "We will manage this systematically so that cases of residents unfairly bearing internet equipment electricity fees never happen again."
