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US Denounces Korea's Internet Platforms

By Kim Tae-gyu
Staff Reporter
The United States called for the Korean government not to adopt a locally developed mobile Internet platform as a national standard during two-day bilateral trade talks, which ended on Thursday.

Experts said such pressure is made in fear that Korea's unique platform can dent the income of U.S. companies, which earn huge royalty revenues by licensing their technologies.

The U.S. delegates, led by David Gross, deputy assistant secretary for International Communications and Information Policy, insisted Korea should not approve of a local wireless Internet platform for interoperability (WIPI) as a national standard for mobile Internet.

WIPI is a middleware, which enables people to download music and games by accessing the Internet through their mobile handsets.

The Korea Wireless Internet Standardization Forum (KWISF) selected the WIPI 2.0 version as a single standard for the nation's mobile platform in mid-February.

The Ministry of Information and Communication (MIC) continued to claim that the standardization is a private movement, aimed at avoiding overlapping investment due to different platforms.

However, the U.S. delegates insisted that the government is behind the scenes in selecting WIPI, thus blocking the alternative platform of Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW), made by mobile chip maker Qualcomm.

The San Diego, California-based company reportedly looks to bring the case to the U.S. Trade Representative, accusing the adoption of WIPI as a trade barrier.

The U.S. has also been raising concerns over the newly proposed 2.3 GHz wireless Internet platform HPi, which was set forth by the Telecommunications Technology Association (TTA), a private federation of local telecom outfits.

The 2.3 GHz platform is a next-generation technology, which will allow Internet access on the move at the speed of current fixed-line broadband connections.

Against such claims, a local analyst said the U.S. is flexing its muscle to maintain the income level of its private companies, by protecting their lucrative royalty assets.

``It doesn't make any sense to force Korea not to adopt a single platform. To accelerate the development of mobile content, we definitely need a standardized technology of our own,'' Kim Kyung-mo, a telecom analyst at Mirae Asset, said.

Kim added U.S. companies must change their mindset of trying to earn easy money through a monopoly on technology.

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02-26-2004 17:42


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