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Fair Trade Commission imposed a penalty of about 6.4 billion won on SK Telecom and SK Broadband.
It is said that SK Telecom has increased its market share by paying part of the sales commission of its subsidiary, SK Broadband.
Reporter Lee Seong-hoon's report.
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There is an advertisement for a combined product at SK Telecom's agency saying that using the Internet and IPTV together provides discounts.
IPTV is a product of SK Broadband, a subsidiary of SK Telecom, but half of it is consigned and sold as a combined product at SK Telecom's agents.
In return, SK Broadband pays a sales commission to the agency, and the FTC investigation found that SK Telecom paid part of the commission instead.
The amount paid over the four years from 2016 was estimated to be 19.92 billion won.
[Jeongjinuk / Fair Trade Commission, Business Group Director: unfair as support the issue is likely to be exposed to the outside caused the companies did not support a substantially properly cost-sharing achieved, but to share the sales commission expenses as a post-settlement system]
at the time SK Broadband had to prevent its credit rating from being demoted due to the burden of debt.
The FTC saw that SK Broadband's IPTV sales and market share increased significantly thanks to the influence and financial power of SK Telecom, the number one mobile communication industry.
Accordingly, SK Telecom imposed a penalty of 6,396 million won on both companies along with a corrective order, saying that it was an unfair support for SK Broadband.
SK Telecom said, "There was no support action due to the objective and rational sharing of sales fees between the two companies."
(Video coverage: Kim Min-cheol, Video editing: Lee Seung-yeol, VJ: Jeong Min-gu)