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Korea is Pushing Boundaries in Networking & Telephony
The South Korean Government is driving a new strategy consisting of 8
services, 3 infrastructures, and 9 new growth engines to encourage new
demand and induce investment. Learn about the IT
839 Strategy and for partnership opportunities send a message to info@iparkboston.com.
Editor's Perspective
Policy in practice
March 1, 2006
Telecom regulatory policy is a secondary or tertiary consideration for
the governments of many countries around the world. In a place like the
U.S., it's both a political bargaining chip and a political stepchild,
but in all cases still a lesser concern, something that seems never
quite fully baked and suffers from chronic revision. In a country like
Trinidad and Tobago, which is only beginning the process of
deregulating
its telecom industry, it's something too long ignored and in need of
much work for a country and its citizens to catch up with the rest of
the world.
In the Republic of Korea (more commonly called South Korea), the story
is quite different. The government there has been not only an advocate,
but also an agent for change. In just under two decades, South Korea
has
gone from a telecom also-ran to the No. 1 broadband market in the
world,
and the most progressive nation of telecom users in the world. It's
been
through policies such as the National Informatization Framework,
established in 1996, that the country's IT and communications fortunes
have changed. The IT-839 policy discussed in our feature below is
another more recent engine of change.
A report published a few years ago by the International
Telecommunication Union noted that Korea might have been ill-suited in
some ways to become such a high-tech juggernaut: It's per capita income
over the last few decades was historically lower than some other
countries in Asia, and the Korean alphabet's usage of pictographic
letters didn't seem to be something that would easily translate to the
Internet era. Yet, education and literacy have ranked extremely high
against the rest of the world--and then there's the governmental
factor.
The Korean government's hands-on style might not work or be welcome
within the governmental or economic frameworks of some countries around
the world, but it has put Korea in the position of being a global
technology leader, and it has prepared and encouraged Korean technology
companies in such a way that they are well positioned for expansion and
growth into markets outside Korea. It's hard to argue the process when
the effect is so overwhelmingly positive.
E-mail me at DOShea@prismb2b.com.
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South Korea's IT Policy Branding, "IT
839"
The Internet created the Cyber World. Mobile and Wireless
technology
push us towards a Ubiquitous World. Now South Korea is moving fast
towards
a new society, "u-Korea" using the IT 839 Strategy.
Learn more.
Feature
Policy with a
purpose
By Dan O'Shea
March 1, 2006
While the transition to the broadband era has some nations stumbling or
hesitating, the Republic of Korea is attacking the issue full-force,
and
increasingly is exporting its ingenuity to the world...
(Click on the link above or scroll down for the full-length
feature)
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In the Spotlight
Jong-Seog Koh,
Korea Telecom
By Dan O'Shea
March 1, 2006
One of the technologies that has South Korea so well positioned to
remain at the forefront of the global broadband food chain is WiBro,
the
mobile broadband solution that is aligned with the WiMAX Forum's
interoperability efforts, but will be available this year, well ahead
of
Mobile WiMAX. WiBro also is one of the key technologies in the IT-839
strategy. Telephony's Dan O'Shea spoke with Jong-Seog Koh, vice
president of the network planning department at Korea Telecom's Mobile
Internet Business Group, about WiBro and KT's plans for the
technology...
(Click on the link above or scroll down for the full-length
interview)
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Related Links
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ADVERTISEMENT
Korea is
Pushing Boundaries in Networking & Telephony
The South Korean Government
is driving a new strategy consisting of 8 services, 3 infrastructures,
and 9 new
growth engines to encourage new demand and induce investment. Learn
about the
IT
839 Strategy and for partnership opportunities send a message to info@iparkboston.com.
Feature (Full-length)
Policy with a purpose
By Dan O'Shea
March 1, 2006
While the transition to the broadband era has some nations stumbling
or hesitating, the Republic of Korea is attacking the issue full-force,
and increasingly is exporting its ingenuity to the world.
There are 15.5 million households in the Republic of Korea (South
Korea), and about 12 million of them have some form of broadband
access.
At this point, everyone knows that South Korea has the highest
broadband
penetration in the world, and has for some time, but putting it in
those
pure, staggering terms provides the best understanding of what that
ranking really means.
Meanwhile, broadband penetration in the U.S. is just over 40%, and
though the populations and numbers of households in these two countries
are not exactly comparable, the rapid, widespread adoption that
broadband has achieved in South Korea has little to do with the
relative
size of the country. It may have a lot more to do with the willingness
of that country's government to realize the potential benefits of
widespread broadband adoption, and make it a top priority.
In the U.S., broadband adoption also is something of a political
object.
Telecom industry officials and regulators both recognize and often
discuss the problem of slow broadband adoption, as well as what fast
and
more widespread adoption would do for the country and its citizens,
especially those in low-income areas. And the issue receives even
greater attention every four years when the nation is electing its
president. Yet, broadband remains a footnote issue for the U.S.--there
are no national goals for adoption that are encouraged by the
government.
In South Korea, the government has long taken a different kind of
stance
when it comes to broadband, information technology and other high-tech
areas. Its active commitment to high-tech communications and IT goes
back to at least 1995, when the Korean government initiated a program
to
promote IT innovation on a national scale. That campaign resulted in
the
National Informatization Framework of 1996, which outlined at least 10
technology areas in which advancement would be important to Korea's
economy and its position as a technologically advanced society.
More recently, the Korean government's IT-839 strategy is carrying on
this tradition of technology activism and involvement. The strategy was
developed in 2004 and set goals for service providers to establish
broad
implementation of several different technologies and services in Korea
by 2010.
By the time of IT-839's formulation, South Korea already was the top
broadband market in the world, but the Ministry of Information and
Communication (MIC) for the Republic of Korea saw no reason that the
nation, nor its service providers and technology firms, should rest on
their collective laurels. "We cannot afford to be complacent with past
achievement in the Korean IT industry, since today's winner-takes-all
society allows only a company or a country with the world's best
technologies to survive the fierce competition across international
borders," said Dae-je Chin, minister of the MIC, in announcing the
reasons and aims for IT-839.
The ultimate goal, he said, is for South Korea as a nation to achieve
$20,000 per capita in gross domestic product.
And the strategy is already having an effect on Korea's domestic
broadband market, according to the companies that are closest to it.
"Thanks to the continuous Korean government effort to promote the IT
industry, such as the IT-839 policy, the high-speed broadband Internet
users have increased 17.2%, and the Internet users have increased 25.3%
within the three years since the government focused on these kind of
policies," said Stephane Bae, chief operating officer at SJ Namo
Interactive, an Web-authoring software company based in Seoul, with a
U.S. headquarters in San Jose, Calif.
The competitive spirit with which Chin spoke in relation to IT and
broadband isn't just a general missive from a government official. The
IT-839 strategy delves into the specific services, infrastructures and
new growth engines that are key to realizing the strategy's goals.
Among services, there are eight different segments identified: Wireless
Broadband Service (WiBro), Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB),
W-CDMA, Home Network Service, Telematics, Radio Frequency
Identification
Service (RFID), Terrestrial Digital TV Service and Internet Telephony
Service (VoIP). Additionally, there are three technology infrastructure
concepts broken out for further attention: Broadband Convergence
Network
(BcN), Ubiquitous Sensor Network (USN) and Next-Generation Internet
Protocol (IPv6). Finally, IT-839 also details nine "new growth
engines":
Next-Generation Mobile Communications Devices, Digital TV/Broadcasting
Devices, Home Network Devices, System-on-a-Chip (IT SoC),
Next-Generation PC, Embedded Software, Digital Contents and Software
Solutions, Telematics Devices and Intelligent Service Robot.
If some of these sound like uniquely Korean concepts, that's because
some of them are. WiBro is a Korean broadband wireless standard, but
increasingly aligned with the global WiMAX standards effort. Korean DMB
technology also is a variation on the many emerging solutions for
distribution of TV programming and multimedia content to all kinds of
mobile devices--though with advanced wireless technologies like WiBro
and W-CDMA in the mix, Korean consumers and businesses might be more
ready for DMB's benefits than some other countries.
Home Network Service, meanwhile, involves not only services like
video-on-demand over a broadband connection, but also the
often-dreamed-about idea of a home full of networked appliances. IT-839
mentions the goal of having 10 million homes with some form of Home
Network Service by 2007.
Then there are the infrastructure goals. BcN focuses on the idea of
creating a nationally integrated broadband network by 2010, with a
bandwidth goal of delivering 50 Mb/s to 100 Mb/s to 20 million
fixed-line and wireless customers by that year. Though BcN on the
surface may seem no different than any other nation's general hopes for
broadband, IT-839 adds the bandwidth details, timing and coverage goals
that make BcN policy with a purpose. Korea's National Computerization
Agency is currently evaluating potential BcN contractors and is
expected
to make some decisions this month.
The USN goal goes along the same line of thinking. Around the world,
wireless sensor networks are being increasingly deployed in all
different kinds of business and public venues. But Korea's USN push has
in mind a grander, more coherent goal--the wide usage of RFID tags and
broad deployment of sensors connected to the BcN to create a
ubiquitously connected society of people, machines and objects, with
personal convenience and overall improved efficiency as the ultimate
benefits.
Many of the concepts and technologies mentioned as part of IT-839 may
not be fully realized until closer to the policy's 2010 target, but as
2006 opens, Korean service providers are well on their way to making
progress on at least the first three of those eight services mentioned
in the policy. Last November, Korea Telecom, the largest fixed wireline
network operator in the country, inaugurated the first public WiBro
network in Busan, South Korea, where that city was hosting the Asia
Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
"We are showing that you can do 1 Mb/s downstream with mobility," said
Jong-Seog Koh, vice president of the network planning department at
Korea Telecom's Mobile Internet Business Group, in an interview with
Telephony just before the APEC launch.
About 500 new WiBro phones from KT vendor and fellow Korean company
Samsung, which is based in Seoul, were used in that initial launch. "In
some other countries, you are reading stories of people complaining
about their mobile services," said Hung Song, vice president of the
global marketing group at Samsung. "In Korea, we are giving them good
stories to tell about their mobile service."
KT is expected during the first part of this year to begin expanding
its
WiBro service to Seoul and elsewhere in Korea. The company said just
last week it will launch a WiBro test service in four districts of
Seoul
this week, and availability will broaden in the next few months. Later
in the year, fellow Korean service provider SK Telecom, which already
has the largest mobile network and service in the country, is expected
to follow suit with its own WiBro launch.
SK Telecom recently aligned with Wavesat, a broadband wireless chipset
developer located in Montreal, Canada, to develop a system-on-a-chip
based on WiBro and orthogonal frequency division multiple access
(OFDMA).
"Basically, we are developing a Wavesat chipset with some contributions
from SKT for the features the chipset will support," said Vijay Dube,
vice president of marketing and business development at Wavesat.
"Typically, a network operator doesn't work that closely with a chip
company, but they want to be very involved in the development of these
technologies."
The WiBro efforts of Korean network operators also stand to inspire a
broader industry of service providers and vendors that are hoping to
rely on WiMAX to realize their broadband dreams. WiBro is closely
aligned with Mobile WiMAX, and is being created as a profile within the
WiMAX Forum's technology certification strategy.
DMB is another service on the IT-839 list that is likely to have a real
impact in the very near term. The service already is emerging as a
potential application for WiBro and other broadband access solutions.
There are both satellite-based and terrestrial-based multimedia
broadcasting services as part of DMB.
The Seoul office of ABI Research recently released a study on DMB that
suggested the capability could help network operators that are
experiencing declines in voice and traditional data access revenue by
creating a new revenue stream from content broadcasting. The pace of
the
DMB evolution will rely to some extent on how much content is
available,
ABI said. There are currently several DMB-enabled devices available in
South Korea, and SK Telecom is expected to soon offer DMB services.
With W-CDMA, there were initially some stumbling blocks, as SK Telecom
and second-largest mobile carrier KTF originally launched the
technology
in 2003 to little response. But late last year, with some urging from
the MIC, SK Telecom said it would invest nearly $500 million in W-CDMA,
with the goal of covering 84 cities by the end of this year. KTF said
around the same time that it would invest nearly $350 million in
W-CDMA.
While technology policy is well along to fulfilling its purpose within
South Korea, strategic policies such as IT-839 also are looking to have
an effect on a global scale by strengthening the ability of Korean
companies to compete globally and take their innovations into new
markets like the U.S.
Bae, of SJ Namo Interactive, said his company faced initial challenges
establishing brand awareness and a market foothold in the U.S., but its
strong start in Korea and the earlier success of other Korean companies
helped its cause. "These resources that Korea has, and that Namo has,
have helped [the company] develop a very powerful Web-authoring tool,"
Bae said. "The expansion of Samsung and LG in the worldwide market and
the fact that Korea helped build the trust in the Korea IT industry
somehow influences our entrances in the international marketplace."
Vendors like Samsung and LG increasingly have been participating in the
U.S. market and other markets, and the relative huge size and reach of
their corporate resources have helped them. For some smaller Korean
companies, the challenge may be a bit tougher, but that's where
agencies
like iPark come into play. iPark is an IT Korea promotional agency
operated by the Korean MIC, with locations all over the world,
including
Silicon Valley and Boston in the U.S. iPark has several portfolio
companies in the U.S. market, including Namo, that it helps to create,
nurture and maintain a competitive presence.
"[iPark's] primary goal is to deliver value-added localization services
to Korea's emerging technology companies seeking presence in North
America markets," Bae said. "The presence of iPark and the information
sharing help any Korean companies to safely and successfully manage
their business in the U.S. marketplace. For example, iPark would
provide
a "virtual warehousing" service to its tenant companies, helping
companies like us who do not have fulfillment facilities to distribute
our product nationwide."
Namo is now expanding into many other markets beyond the U.S., and as
it
does, it's one of many companies with roots in South Korea that will
carry on the message that technology policy with a purpose and specific
goals can really work.
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In the Spotlight
(Full-length)
Jong-Seog Koh,
Korea Telecom
By Dan O'Shea
March 1, 2006
One of the technologies that has South Korea so well positioned to
remain at the forefront of the global broadband food chain is WiBro,
the
mobile broadband solution that is aligned with the WiMAX Forum's
interoperability efforts, but will be available this year, well ahead
of
Mobile WiMAX. WiBro also is one of the key technologies in the IT-839
strategy. Telephony's Dan O'Shea spoke with Jong-Seog Koh, vice
president of the network planning department at Korea Telecom's Mobile
Internet Business Group, about WiBro and KT's plans for the technology.
On the relationship between WiBro and Mobile WiMAX: WiBro is
fully compliant with the standard for 802.16e. WiBro and Mobile WiMAX
will be technologies that you can use interchangeably. We believe that
more than 90% of the technology aspects are common between WiBro and
Mobile WiMAX. They are more than 90% harmonized. At the physical layer,
they are already very similar, and at the upper MAC layer, there will
be
only a few differences that will be addressed through a software change
at the appropriate time. We have joined the board of the WiMAX Forum
because we want to participate in the development of these technologies
and promote WiBro as a broadband solution.
On KT's commercial service plans: We are launching the service
in
the early part of 2006. It is called Wonder-Net, and our goal is to
have
3.1 million subscribers by 2010. We are investing $1 billion in this
service of this time, but our goal is that it will generate more than
that in revenue over this time. In 2006, you will see it as a service
for the early adopters and market segments such as students. It will
deliver existing Internet services, but also what we think can be
killer
apps, such as MMS, push applications, mobile gaming and especially IP
multicasting.
On WiBro versus other broadband technologies: We look at WiBro
like it is giving the consumer a wireless DSL connection with the
mobility aspect. By later in 2006, we see some integration with Wi-Fi
and CDMA to create fixed/mobile convergence. But we see the fixed voice
and mobile voice markets shrinking, so there will be a focus on
wireless
data services with mobility.
On WiBro making its commercial debut at the Asia-Pacific Economic
Summit last November: APEC brings VIPs from 31 countries to Busan
[in southern South Korea] to discuss very important economic issues.
Our
network there [had] 10 base stations. It's one of the first commercial
demonstrations of a WiBro hand-off with mobility. APEC is a very
important venue to display WiBro publicly because we are showing the
world what this technology can do.
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