Qualcomm Inc (QCOM)

[khemara_qc]

Telecom sector looks beyond 3G, broadband Internet

http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/archives/result_contents.asp?id=200504220024&query=wcdma

In a technology-mad country where people use their mobile phones to pay credit-card bills, listen to music and watch television, delivering voice communications is no longer the focal point of competition in the telecom industry.
Telephone operators, Internet services providers and equipment vendors are looking beyond conventional third-generation mobile and broadband Internet services and seeking to deploy enhanced technologies that offer efficient integrations between voice, video and data transmissions.


Mobile television


Among the newly promoted technologies, mobile television service is gathering most interest. Mobile television services, dubbed digital multimedia broadcasting, are designed to beam digital television, audio and data to handheld devices via satellite or land-based television airwaves. Korean mobile-phone operators and television broadcasters are expecting commercial services during the second quarter.

According to a report by the state-run Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute, the mobile television industry will generate 14.7 trillion won in services and equipment ($14.2 billion) through 2010 while creating about 160,000 jobs annually during the same period.

Land-based services are expected to attract more than 10 million customers by the year 2010 while satellite-based services are expected to have 4.3 million by that time, according to the institute.

The Ministry of Information and Communication allocated a license for satellite-based mobile television services to TU Media Corp., 30 percent owned by the country's largest mobile-phone carrier SK Telecom Co., in December last year.

TU Media, currently running trial operations, hopes to begin commercial services in May and plans to provide 14 video and 24 audio channels to customers for a monthly fixed rate of 13,000 won. The company will take around 25 percent of the service fees it shares with the country's three mobile operators - SK Telecom, KT Freetel Co. and LG Telecom Ltd.

The Korean Broadcasting Commission, the broadcast regulator, reversed its earlier decision Tuesday and allowed TU Media to air programs by local land-based television stations on their satellite network.

Last month, the Communication Ministry allocated six licenses for land-based mobile television services that are expected to go live in June. The country's three major land-based television stations - KBS, MBC and SBS - secured spots for the nascent market.

The three remaining spots saved for non-terrestrial broadcasters were allocated to consortiums led by cable news broadcaster YTN, radio broadcaster CBS and a group led by electronics equipment makers PSK Tech Inc., Homecast Co. and digital content developer Sigong Tech Co.

Industry watchers expect land-based mobile television services to have a larger audience than its rival standard, with its free services and better content.

However, finding a revenue model from land-based mobile television services for mobile operators is proving to be a challenge. Mobile operators KT Freetel and LG Telecom have been demanding the government allow them to charge customers for land-based mobile television services to cover their investment in marketing and building additional transmission facilities.

Industry watchers believe satellite-based mobile television can penetrate dense built-up areas and tunnels better than the land-based services, with TU Media already having installed more than 5,000 gap fillers nationwide to cover blanketed areas. The company said it will invest an additional 700 billion this year to upgrade their transmission infrastructure.

The aforementioned telecom operators say they will have to invest at least 200 billion won in transmission infrastructure to match TU Media's level of coverage nationwide.


Portable Internet


The wired and wireless sector is renewing their battle for supremacy on the local telecom market and the portable Internet, expected to go online next year, has been the focal point of competition.

The portable Internet, dubbed by Korean officials as WiBro for wireless broadband, is designed as a higher data-rate wireless broadband services that provides wider coverage than wireless LAN services and faster connections than third-generation mobile telephony.

In January, the Ministry of Information and Communication allocated three licenses for portable Internet services to fixed-line giant KT Corp., Hanarotelecom Inc. and mobile carrier SK Telecom.

The WiBro operators will be required to provide Internet access at a peak rate of 1 mps to wireless devices moving at speeds up to 70 kilometers per hour. The Ministry of Information and Communication allocated the 2.3Ghz band for portable Internet operations and approved the IEEE 802.16 standard as WiBro's base technology last year.

Telecom operators hope the portable Internet services will enable them to create more value-added services and market them to a larger audience.

The state-run Korea Information Strategy Development Institute predicts the portable Internet sector to generate 12.9 trillion won by 2010 and have more than 9.45 million customers in 2016.

The three operators are scheduling commercial launches next year.

KT, which controlled 93.8 percent of the fixed-line telephony market and 51 percent of the broadband Internet market in 2004, hopes the portable Internet will bridge its fixed-line dominance to the wireless sector.

The company announced last year that it will invest 18 trillion won ($16 billion) by 2010 to promote five new growth engines in next-generation mobile communications, home networking, Internet protocol-based television, Internet protocol-based business solutions and digital content development.

The former state fixed-line monopoly, which plans to start commercial services in April next year, will invest more than 1 trillion won over three years starting in 2006 to develop portable Internet services and hopes to expand its coverage to 84 cities nationwide by 2008.

SK Telecom, which had a 51.3 percent share of the mobile telephony market last year, is concentrating on developing differentiated services that do not overlap with its W-CDMA third-generation mobile telephony services. The company, starting commercial services in June next year and eyeing nationwide coverage in 2009, hopes its advanced experience in marketing mobile data services will give them an advantage in developing killer applications.

Hanarotelecom, which acquired No. 3 broadband operator Thrunet Co. earlier this year, hopes its expanded broadband customer pool can give them a stronger base to compete against the bigger rivals.

Hanarotelecom, runner-up to KT in the broadband market last year with a 23.1 percent share, plans to develop video-on-demand and Internet protocol-based television as its killer applications for the portable Internet services.


High-speed downlink


Although mobile television and portable Internet services are gathering most of the attention in the telecom sector, some industry watchers are now predicting high-speed downlink packet access, or HSDPA, will compete with both technologies and emerge as the dominant standard.

HSDPA, a new third-generation mobile telephony specification, is designed to deliver data at a peak rate of 14.4 mbps (megabytes per second), better than current third-generation W-CDMA networks that are designed to offer data rates of 2 mbps.

Electronics manufacturers Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. are planning to provide HSDPA-enabled handsets to mobile carriers SK Telecom and KT Freetel Co. for their W-CDMA services that expands nationwide in the second half of the year.

"The deployment of HSDPA will have a 'tsunami-like' impact on the local mobile communication market, specifically in the future road map for third-generation technologies, development of killer applications, competitive relations with other technologies and the evolution of mobile phones," said La Juno, a researcher at the LG Economic Research Institute, predicting that a strong local market for HSDPA will emerge around the first half of next year.

Third-generation mobile telephony services such as W-CDMA or CDMA2000 1X EV-DO are designed to deliver data at speeds of 2 mbps or 2.4 mbps. However, the data rates are shared across other mobile phones within the base station's coverage area, leaving individual users with much slower connections of around 300 to 400 kilobytes per second.

HSDPA attempts to solve the problem by adding more bandwidth. The system would allow individuals to send or download data more quickly and at the same time free up bandwidth for other users.

Industry watchers predict HSDPA will deliver data at an average of 2 mbps to 3 mbps to individual users, closer to the connection speeds of conventional broadband Internet technologies such as digital subscriber lines and cables.

La expected the faster-than-expected deployment of HSDPA will enable the new technology to compete in the same market with other portable Internet technologies such as mobile television and WiBro, unlike earlier industry predictions that saw HSDPA as complimentary.

"With HSDPA being more than capable of providing mobile Internet and television services on its network, its clash with other next-generation technologies such as DMB and WiBro is inevitable. The competition will be focused on which can deliver the 'mobile triple play,' or the delivery of voice, video and data transmissions on handsets, more efficiently. In this area, HSDPA is clearly ahead of competition at this point," said La.

"To compete with HSDPA, DMB operators must utilize their advantage in content delivery and costs, while designing their network to be fully interoperable with current 2.5-generation and third-generation telephony networks. WiBro operators must strengthen voice-over-Internet protocol features and focus on delivering cheaper voice services," he said.

([e-mail])


By Kim Tong-hyung



no

2005.04.22