The Korea Communications Commission (KCC) on Wednesday fined 396 million won (US$370,000) on Facebook for unfair business practices.

The dispute began when subscribers of local telecommunication providers SK Broadband and LG Uplus began experiencing a slowdown in their Facebook connections. The telecommunications providers argued that Facebook should share the cost of maintaining the heavy data traffic generated by its social networking operations. Facebook, refused to pay for the traffic it generated, opting only to pay KT Corp. for the use of its cache server.

KCC said that Facebook unilaterally changed connection routes of SK Telecom, SK Broadband, and LG Uplus to slow the connections of users accessing Facebook on SK Broadband and LG Uplus networks.

The Korean watchdog also advised that Facebook should share the cost of maintaining the speed of its data traffic services with South Korea's telecommunications providers.