South Korea fines mobile carriers $78.5 mn for alleged collusion in number portability. SK Telecom Co., the local industry leader, was slapped with a fine of 42.7 billion won. KT Corp. and LG Uplus Corp. were ordered to pay 33 billion won and 38.3 billion won, respectively, according to the Fair Trade Commission (FTC) The regulator noted that the companies had colluded to limit competition with each other in the NMP market, as the country’s mobile subscription has been already saturated with virtually no new subscribers. The monthly mobile data traffic running on fifth-generation (5G) networks was expected to surpass 1 million terabytes for the first time in December, as news viewership soared following President Yoon Suk Yeol’s surprise martial law declaration. The usage of the high-speed network remained above 900,000 TB since April, reaching 996,782 TB in October, accordingto data from the Ministry of Science and ICT. The total number of daily MNP transfers declined sharply from 28,800 in 2014 to 7,200 in 2022.