Korea awards two 3G licenses. One more to go

date: 15th December 2000, source: ITU Telecom Online News

The South Korean government has awarded two out of three allocated third-generation licenses, but fails to resolve an ongoing controversy over the adoption of the European and Japanese-developed W-CDMA, or Qualcomm's cdma2000.

The Korean Ministry of Information Communications awarded on Friday licenses to SK Telecom and KT Freetel, the number one and number two mobile operators in the country. Both SK Telecom and KT Freetel will be allowed to use W-CDMA as specified on their license application.

The government has yet to decide on the final license. It must choose between applications from LG Telecom, which was pushing for a W-CDMA deployment and Hanaro Telecom, the only bidder to submit an application based on the technology favored by the government, cdma2000.

The government has mandated that at least one of the three 3G operators deploy cdma2000.

Ironically, online reports of the licensing outcome say Hanaro Telecom, currently a fixed line operator, failed to win a 3G license due to a lack of technology know-how despite the fact that it was adhering to the government's guidelines to use cdma2000 and has signed a development agreements with Ericsson and Marconi.

LG Telecom's bid was also apparently rejected due to technical issues although most observers say the government is hoping to force the country's third mobile operator to go with a cdma2000 3G network. LG Telecom is now faced with a difficult decision between resubmitting a bid using cdma2000, or risk losing out on the whole 3G market.

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