A global first for Korea as HSDPA is Commercialized The commercial service of high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) with which one can engage in a telephone conversation while seeing the face of the counterpart while moving has been started in Korea for the first time in the world. On May 16, SK Telecom announced that it has launched 3G+, an HSDPA product with which high-speed, highcapacity data communication is possible, and that it will go into service in 25 cities nationwide. As a result, Korea has started the commercial service of HSDPA for the first time in the world and, thereby, has opened, in earnest, the era of nextgeneration mobile communications. Especially, as KTF, following SK Telecom, plans to provide a nationwide service in the form of HSDPA from next month, it is forecast that the Korean mobile communication market will rapidly enter into the era of the 3rd generation mobile communication. HSDPA is very different from the existing 2G mobile communication and WCDMA (Wideband code division multiple access) based on Release 3 and Release 4. The most outstanding is the data transmission speed. Theoretically, the speed of downloading data from a base station to a terminal in an optimized environment is 14.4Mbps. Although, theoretically, the speed of the HSDPA commercialized by SK Telecom stops at being at 1.8Mbps, this is of the level of VDSL when compared to the wired super-speed Internet. This is the same with the HSDPA service that KTF will put on the market next year. It plans to begin with the downloading speed of 1.8Mbps with its first commercialization this year, reach 3.6Mbps in the beginning of next year, 7.2Mbps at the end of next year, and a maximum of 14.4Mbps by around 2008. HSDPA is qualitatively different from the previous second-generation service. HSDPA signals the 'all IP' environment of the wireless. With regard to voice telephone conversation, the wireless VoIP service is possible. With HSDAP, complicated wired and wireless services can be linked with the IP base. The benefits that consumers can enjoy are on a different level from before. In the future, image phone conversation will be basic and all kinds of additional services, including image chatting, image coloring, image mailboxes, and others, will be materialized. The functions of the USIM (Universal Subscriber Identity Module) Card materialized by SK Telecom for the first time in the world are beyond imagination. With the USIM Card, SK Telecom plans to support global, automatic roaming and also support, in phases, financial convergence services, including transportation cards, membership, coupons, and others. Consumers will be able to experience diverse mobile communication services. And as the data transmission speed has become much faster, it is likely that the charges for the wireless Internet services will become relatively cheaper in the future. KTF has decided to launch its HSDPA commercial service next month, a little bit earlier than had been predicted earlier. It will start with 50 cities (Or, 79.5% coverage of the population) in the first half of this year. It plans to complete the construction of a network that includes 84 cities covering 91% of the total population by the end of the year. SK Telecom and KTF have decided to newly launch 4 to 5 terminals each. The subsidy will be around 300,000 won. The prices will be similar to the second generation mobile phones, thereby making it less burdensome for consumers. The fees for the voice phone conversation and data phone conversation will be maintained at the same level as the previous 2G. Diverse promotion charging systems will be introduced for videophone conversations, thereby invigorating the market.