CDMA2000 beats WCDMA rollout in Korea

date: June 20, 2001

SK Telecom will not deploy its W-CDMA 3G wireless service before the start of 2002 World Cup as it had originally promised. As a result more than 670 small- and medium-sized firms and venture firms which are the members of the SK-led IMT-2000 consortium are likely to suffer from heavy setbacks.

SK Telecom announced Tuesday that it plans to launch commercial service of a CDMA-IMT 2000 service coded as a 3G CDMA-2000 1X-EV-DO (Evolution Data Only) before the World Cup in June of next year.

The largest mobile service provider in the country, however, clinched the coveted license for the W-CDMA service, and promised to deliver service on the eve of the World Cup.

Sources said the SK determined that W-CDMA-2000 service does not have any bright business prospects and thus switched to the CDMA camp.

This so-called CDMA-2000 1X EV-DO is the most advanced CDMA service currently and can provide Internet Service about ten times faster than the current CDMA-2000 1X service.

What lies at the core of the problem is that the 1X EV is CDMA-based technology and not W-CDMA based technology.

Around the end of last year, SK Telecom declared that it would set up a W-CDMA 3G service network across the country by investing W1.2 trillion by 2003 and a cumulative total of W3.2 trillion by 2007.

One high-ranking official at SK Telecom revealed that the announcement Tuesday is an indirect acknowledgement that SK's W-CDMA service is going to be delayed.

SK Telecom had committed itself around the end of last year to provide roaming service between second and 3G services and between CDMA and W-CDMA services.

But Qualcomm of the US, which holds the core patents for CDMA technology, disclosed that the US company will be able to provide such a chip with a roaming function by 2003.

One consortium-member company was outraged at SK Telecom, saying that his company has thus invested several billion Korean won into producing equipment for SK-IMT and the investment has yet to generate any income.

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