Half of domestic internet traffic is from overseas platforms... Google Holo 35%

The proportion of overseas businesses increased from 38.1% to 47% in 5 years... Google's overwhelming number one

Top 3 including Netflix and Meta… Debate over ‘network usage costs’ reignites

(Seoul = Yonhap News) Reporter Park Hyeong-bin = Over the past five years, the share of major overseas telecommunications carriers such as Google, Netflix, and Meta in domestic Internet traffic has been found to have increased significantly compared to domestic carriers.

According to data submitted by Rep. Choi Hyeong-du of the National Assembly's Science, Technology, Information, Broadcasting and Communications Committee on the 6th from the Ministry of Science and ICT, the share of domestic average daily traffic from major foreign value-added telecommunications carriers such as Google, Netflix, Meta, and Apple increased by 8.9 percentage points from 38.1% in 2021 to 47.0% in 2025.

During the same period, the traffic share of domestic businesses such as Naver, Kakao [035720], TVING, and Coupang increased by 4.77 percentage points from 4.5% to 9.27%.

By business operator, Google's traffic share showed the largest increase, increasing 7.71 percentage points from 27.1% in 2021 to 34.81% in 2025. Due to the expanded use of YouTube, about 35% of average daily traffic is concentrated on Google.

Next, foreign operators dominated the top 1 to 3 traffic spots, with Netflix recording 6.23% and Meta recording 4.72%.

Among domestic businesses, Naver had the highest at 4.54%, followed by Coupang (1.93%), Tving (1.49%), and Kakao (1.31%).

As the traffic share of overseas operators is increasing, the debate over 'network usage costs' between the domestic telecommunications industry and global content and platform operators is rising again.

The domestic telecommunications industry argues that global CPs, which generate large amounts of traffic through video streaming, should also share network investment and maintenance costs.

On the other hand, Global CP's position is that charging a separate network usage fee is double charging as users are already paying Internet usage fees to telecommunication companies, and it also goes against the principles of Internet openness and network neutrality.