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quote.bloomberg.com
Korea Telecom Says It Will Use CDMA-2000 for New Phone Services
By Ian King
Seoul, July 6 (Bloomberg) -- Korea Telecom Corp., Korea's largest telecommunications company, said it will use technology licensed from San Diego-based Qualcomm Inc. if it wins from the government the right to provide new phone services.
Korea Telecom -- which is the majority stakeholder in Korea Telecom Freetel Corp. and is buying another mobile service provider, Hansol M.com Co. -- said it will select Qualcomm's code division multiple access 2000 technology.
``We believe that the government should allow service providers to choose which technology they will use and fortunately that is their plan,'' said Nam Jung Soo, head of the company's IMT200 promotion department, at a public hearing on a government plan to select licensees. ``Korea Telecom will use CDMA 2000.''
Korea is the largest market for Qualcomm's technology, with all 26 million of its users hooked up via CDMA cellular phones. Qualcomm technology accounts for about 20 percent of the world cell phone market, with around 60 million users worldwide.
In formulating its plan to award the licenses, the government mulled choosing one standard or leaving it open to service providers.
The government said it had considered choosing the new Wide CDMA technology, an alternative standard produced by Japan's NTT CoMoMo Inc. and European phone makers Nokia Oyj and Ericsson SpA. That's because the current version of W-CDMA technology now in use -- global standard for mobile communications, or GSM -- is more widely used with about 60 percent of the world market.
This could have provided Korean users with greater access to global roaming, or the ability to use the same handset on other systems in other countries, and helped handset producers such as Samsung Electronics Co. save money on producing phones for different technologies.
Alternatively, sticking with a derivative of a technology they are already familiar with will reduce development costs, the Ministry of Information and Communication's draft plan said.
KT Freetel and Hansol, which will be merged next year, have about 30 percent of Korea's market.
The government will announce its final plan next week and accept applications for licenses in September. Its will award the permits before the end of the year.
If the current proposal is adopted it is expected to favor the three companies that control Asia's second largest mobile phone market: KT through its two mobile units, SK Telecom Co., the largest provider, and LG Telecom Co.
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