SK Telecom favors EV-DO

date: October 29, 2001

With the wireless Internet service steadily gaining popularity, Korea's mobile carriers are racing to migrate into cdma2000 1x EV-DO systems as soon as possible.

The race for EV-DO comes as voice-oriented 2G wireless service is reaching a saturation point and subscribers begin to get interested in wireless data services.

The shift in trend is expected to drive up the demand for data, which now accounts for a small part of revenues for mobile carriers.

SK Telecom, KTF and LG Telecom plan to commercialize cdma2000 1x EV-DO services before June in 2002 when Korea-Japan World Cup soccer championships takes place.

The three carriers are weighing various strategies in the face of a string of obstacles. Wireless spectrum resources are fast drying up, strategic alliances with foreign partners remain unresolved and complex integration tasks between 2.5G and 3G standards pose numerous technical problems.

SK Telecom, the country's largest mobile carrier, is working with Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics and other systems makers to prepare for the build-up of EV-DO.

Initially, SK Telecom did not favor cdma2000 1x EV-DO. Back in December when the company won the bid for 3G mobile license along with state-run Korea Telecom, it opted for W-CDMA, a competing standard with cdma2000 based on Qualcomm's technology.

The choice had seemed to fit in with SK Telecom's negotiations with NTT DoCoMo for stake investment deals, as the dominant Japanese telecom company favored W-CDMA standard.

But the delay of the alliance deal with NTT DoCoMo sparked worries about SK Telecom's plans to form an East Asia W-CDMA belt covering Korea, China and Japan. The uncertainty about W-CDMA is now pushing SK Telecom to implement cdma2000 1x EV-DO.

Another key reason behind EV-DO upgrade is the traffic jam. SK Telecom's vast subscriber pool is putting enormous pressure on the network in major downtown areas such as Gangnam and Shinchon during the heavy traffic hours.

EV-DO upgrade is 1.7 times larger than 1x standard in terms of user handling capacity, a factor which SK Telecom expects will alleviate the worsening network resource conditions for both voice and data.

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