Wi-Bro and HSDPA go live in Seoul

• Posted: Sunday, July 16, 2006
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• Author: pradhana
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• Filed under: Smartphone

South Korea's two Wi-Bro operators are now live with services in the capital Seoul, and in the same week, cellco KTF also turned on HSDPA offerings.

KT and SKT are both supporting Wi-Bro hotzones, although the former will offer discounted tariffs for the rest of the year, until it achieves broader coverage. Both operators expect coverage across the whole of Seoul by year-end.

KT is launching with a PC data card and tariffs starting at Won6,000 for 500Mb of data per month, ranging up to Won16,000 for unlimited usage. All subscriptions carry a one-off Won30,000 connection fee. Wi-Bro enabled PDAs and notebooks are expected to be introduced during the fourth quarter.

SKT is launching with a PCMCIA data card and a Wi-Bro Unlimited Usage Plan for Won30,000 per month.

KTF's HSDPA service provides coverage to 80% of the population in Korea, and is expected to reach 91% by the end of the year. It is offering two handsets, the Samsung SPH-W2100 and LG-KH1000.

The country's smallest operator, LG Telecom, is in the process of deploying a CDMA2000 1x EV-DO Rev A network, which is expected to go live next year. LG previously abandoned plans to deploy a faster EV-DV network when vendor interest in the technology began to wane around 18 months ago. It is now faced with threats of the removal of its 3G license because of slow roll-out in its new spectrum.

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