A heated discussion about the proposed legislation to have foreign video providers like Netflix and Alphabet's Google pay South Korean network costs took place on Friday in the South Korean parliament. The debates are a reflection of European efforts made by a number of countries that want the European Commission to draught legislation that ensures Big Tech corporations partially pay telecoms infrastructure as video streaming and other data usage rises.

Several legislative measures have been proposed in South Korea in an effort to compel companies to pay what the reform's proponents refer to as a fair price. 'Google and Netflix are responsible for more than one-third of all domestic traffic. Multinational firms should evaluate the situation more quickly.' Legislator Hong Suk-joon made a comment at the hearing. Others disagreed, claiming that taxing the big internet companies may force them to raise their own pricing and hurt South Korean content creators.

The head of the legislative committee looking into the issue, Jung Chung-rae, claimed that the situation 'risks the demise of local content producers while aiming to safeguard a small number of domestic internet service providers.'

More than 259,824 individuals have signed a petition against the legislation, claims activist group Opennet, and Google's YouTube has aggressively fought it.

Google South Korea's Kyoung Hoon Kim, the country director, responded to MPs' questions on what would happen if such legislation were to be passed by saying that 'it will be essential to closely analyse the way the business is conducted.'

Liz Chung, the head of Netflix South Korea, said that her company was exploring for ways to deal with the growing traffic.

We are developing a lot of technical techniques, says Chung, to use networks efficiently and deal with traffic growth. The plan put up by regulators to require Google, Meta, and Netflix to pay a portion of telecom network costs has received plaudits from major European telecom operators, while smaller ones have expressed concern that it will impede competition and the market.

According to experts, the cost of transmitting data stored elsewhere has increased due to the fast growth of global video content and the high cost of building and operating submarine cables and other equipment that transports data.

There are 41.8 million active YouTube users in South Korea out of a total population of 51.6 million. They logged 1.38 billion hours on YouTube in total in September, according to data source Mobile Index.