Introducing free voice roaming service, improving pay-as-you-go pricing system

SK Telecom is reorganizing its roaming rate system for the second time following its first customer value innovation, ‘Contract System Improvement’, and is launching the ‘Self-Safe T Roaming’ service, which eliminates the worry of a huge bill. ‘Self-Safe T Roaming’ will be automatically applied to SK Telecom customers from today without any separate subscription procedures, such as visiting the roaming customer center or making a phone call.

Customers using SK Telecom's voice roaming service can make 3 minutes of free calls (including incoming and outgoing calls, voice/video/HD Voice) per day overseas. The free voice roaming service is the first of its kind in Korea, and when converted to the average rates of countries where voice roaming is available, the benefit is approximately KRW 4,110 per day.

Approximately 80% of SK Telecom's overseas customers use voice roaming for less than 3 minutes a day, so this is expected to be a tangible benefit for customers.

In addition, SK Telecom charges a flat rate of 10,000 won for up to 30 minutes per day when using voice roaming.* If a customer used 30 minutes, they would have previously been charged about 41,100 won, but now they will only have to pay 10,000 won. For reference, about 98% of SK Telecom customers use voice roaming for less than 30 minutes per day.

SK Telecom will also immediately apply a per-second billing system to its voice roaming service. If a customer uses voice roaming for 1 minute and 30 seconds, they would have to pay for 2 minutes (120 seconds) under the existing per-minute billing system. However, from now on, they will only have to pay for 90 seconds of use. SK Telecom said, “In this case, all of the lost revenue for 30 seconds will be returned to the customer.”

Many data roaming users are using data roaming plans such as Asia Pass, Korea-China-Japan Pass, and One Pass, which provide more basic data than the pay-as-you-go rate. However, there are frequent cases where customers who have not subscribed to a separate data roaming plan inadvertently update some app information while abroad, resulting in unwanted high charges.

To resolve these customer inconveniences, SK Telecom has comprehensively improved its data roaming volume-based fee system.

First, data roaming rates will be reduced by 87.5% from the existing 4,506 won per MB (2.2 won per packet) to 563 won (0.275 won per packet).

In addition, the daily data limit has been lowered from 22,000 won to 5,000 won to ensure that customers can use data with peace of mind. The 5,000 won limit is equivalent to about 9 MB of data usage, and if data is exceeded, you can continue to use it at a speed of 200 Kbps or less without additional charges, so there is no significant inconvenience in texting via mobile messenger.

Anyone who is a SK Telecom customer can now use voice and data roaming overseas without worrying about charges through the 'Automatic Safety T Roaming' service, which is automatically applied.

In addition, if you choose a rate plan that suits your voice and data usage patterns, you can use roaming services more cheaply.

Seo Sung-won, head of SK Telecom’s MNO business division (president), said, “Following the improvement of the contract system, we have comprehensively revamped our roaming service as our second customer value innovation effort,” adding, “We plan to continue to present genuine innovation this year, so please keep an eye on how SK Telecom changes.”