Despite the fact that South Korean carrier KT has already announced intentions to offer the iPhone in the country, the handset has yet to gain regulatory approval, being held up this week over location-based service regulations. The Korea Times reports that the Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is debating whether Apple will need a separate license as a location-based information operator in Korea, due to a local law mandating that companies providing location-based information to their customers must acquire a separate license. In addition, the Korean government has thus far asked companies to base their operations for location services on local servers, although no such stipulation exists in the written law.
“Some of the KCC commissioners think that Apple should gain approval as a location-based information provider, while others claim that that would be too excessive,’” said a KCC official. “There are no clear-cut standards on the type of location-based services that the operator would be required to provide on a local server. However, the type of information gathered by the iPhone isn’t likely to be ruled critical enough to mandate Apple to install a local server, although we need more time to reach the conclusion.” According to the article, the ongoing discussions at the KCC have prevented Apple and KT form moving forward with negotiations, including the volume of units KT plans to release and the subsidy provided to customers.