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To: Maurice Winn who wrote (31584)	6/3/1999 8:34:00 AM
From: Boplicity	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 152472

AI Net Starts Wireless Internet Mobile Phone Service in Korea Seoul, June 3 (Bloomberg) -- AI Net Co., a venture capital company in South Korea, said it will start offering commercial Internet service over mobile phones on June 10, becoming the second company to provide such service after NTT Mobile Communications Network Inc. of Japan. Users of AI Net's mobile Internet service will be able to connect to the World Wide Web, trade stocks, conduct online banking, and reserve flights, trains, hotels and movie tickets over cell phones. ''Data traffic will outpace voice traffic in the near future, and we want to be ready,'' said Chung Yong Moon, president of Hansol PCS, which formed a group with five other Korean companies to support AI Net. The five companies are Samsung Electronics, Samsung Securities, Koram Bank, Kornet Freetel and Asiana Airlines. By September, AI Net, Samsung Electronics, Kornet Freetel and Hansol PCS plan to jointly establish an independent company to offer mobile Internet service. It plans to make its mobile phone-based browser software available to all domestic handset makers, to stimulate growth of the wireless Internet market. According to AI Net, Hitachi Information Systems Ltd., Alcatel SA, Samsung Electronics and LG Information & Communications Co. are jointly working to introduce a similar service. Motorola Inc., Nokia Oyj and Ericsson SpA are set to launch another service jointly in the fourth quarter, as is Qualcomm Inc. Local Technology ''The technology was all developed locally, allowing Korean companies to avoid paying costly royalties and service fees to foreign companies,'' AI Net president Lee Sang Woo said in an interview. ''For me, this is a dream come true.'' Samsung Electronics Co., the world's biggest memory chip manufacturer, will make handsets for AI Net under the ''AnyWeb'' brand, Lee said. He expects the handset to sell initially for between 650,000 won and 700,000 won (US$590), about 40 percent more than ordinary handsets. AI Net, established by Lee in 1998 as a provider of Internet shopping services, has 35 employees and capital of 500 million won. Lee, 34, said he went to Samsung Electronics first after developing AI Net's mobile Internet technology. ''We had the accumulated technology, and Samsung had the capital and business know-how,'' he said. ''It's a major breakthrough for small venture capital companies like us.'' AI Net said it secured Samsung Securities Co., Koram Bank and Asiana Airlines as content providers, and plans to recruit more in future. Cellular carriers are eager to offer data transmission to take advantage of surging demand for Internet access, e-mail and other services. By 2002, some analysts expect data to represent as much as 25 percent of traffic on cellular networks, compared with 2 percent today. Almost half of the people in South Korea carry a mobile phone now. By 2001, Samsung expects the number of Internet- enabled mobile phones used in Korea to reach 3.5 million, representing half of projected wireless phone demand that year.