Korea Telecom (KT) is reported to be planning to charge bandwidth-heavy content providers for access to its network in order to subsidize infrastructure upgrades. This follows a move two weeks ago to block access for Samsung Smart TVs, which it says can cause network speeds to become up to 265 times slower when in use. Kim Taehwan, VP of KT's smart network policy task force, told Reuters that "we want to set a rule that we can equally apply to every platform operator that offers data-heavy content as those services threaten to black out our network. They should pay for using our network."
Taehwan went on to say that, "once we set a rule with Samsung, we will apply it to other internet TV operators, be it Apple or Google." Having established a rule for internet TV, Taehwan says that the company's focus will shift to other data-heavy services including YouTube. This decision seems to suggest that KT takes a dim view on net neutrality and could lead to consumers losing out on the services they've paid for if the content providers don't pay up. Google is yet to respond to KT's comments.