SEOUL, KOREA – “The bubble in the South Korean communication market is too substantial. It is time for a paradigm shift in the market dominated by a few large companies.”
Seungtaik Yang, the chairman of Internet Space Time (IST) and a former Minister of Information and Communication, submitted a business application for the fourth generation (4G) of mobile communication system to Korea Communications Communication (KCC) on December 24th last year. KCC is expected to select one consortium next month among either IST or its rival, Korea Mobile Internet (KMI) for the 4G operator. This bid is viewed as an attempt to lower phone bills by stimulating competition in the communications market. Three big telecommunication operators – KT, SK Telecom and LG Uplus – have so far monopolized the Korean market for the last ten years and there have been increasingly disgruntled voices on high service charges among subscribers. In an interview with Korea IT Times, Yang has shown confidence in the business as IST has already completed technology development in collaboration with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).
Yang is preparing for the 4G communications service with Wibro Advanced communications network, which was developed with local technologies and selected as the international standard along with LTE. “Wibro Advanced is the upgraded version of Wibro and its wireless internet speed is two to three times faster than LTE, and four times that of Wibro.”
“4G should be different from conventional services. 1G was started with an analog phone, 2G represented with CDMA and 3G was with WCDMA which allowed global roaming and video calls, but all three mainly providing voice call services. Meanwhile, 4G should center on data and video services based around Internet search, chatting, and video. 4G services need to have a transmission capacity of over 150mbps. However, current communication operators boasting 4G services have transmission capacity of less than 100mbps. In this sense, Wibro Advanced technology capable of over 300mbps can be presented as a true 4G operator.
As Wibro transfers voice transmissions on wireless data, service charges can be significantly reduced. Yang said that, “If IST obtains the business authorization, each mobile subscriber from the current 530 million can save over KRW 10,000 a month. This means that the benefit to the public will amount to at least KRW 1.3 trillion.” With lower communications charges, ordinary users as well as specialists will be able to conveniently develop application services and make a profit without great expenses.
“In the Web 3.0 environment, users could become web owners. In the Web 1.0 environment they were merely spectators, but over time they evolved to contribute to websites in the Web 2.0 environment. If users of the Web 3.0 develop User Creative Service (UCS), they can become virtual owners of their services. If their services become lucrative, this can also become a win-win business between the developers and the platform operator.”
