/24-7PressRelease/ - MUMBAI, INDIA, August 07, 2007 - Korea recently topped the International Telecommunication Union's Digital Opportunity Index for the second year running, ahead of Japan and Denmark. The e-index is based on international indicators - such as mobile coverage and tariffing, infrastructure and user numbers - for benchmarking countries.
According to BuddeComm's 2007 Telecoms, Mobile and Broadband in North and South Korea, " http://www.bharatbook.com/bookdetail.asp?bookid=25157 " there is no better example of South Korea's commitment to lead than the country's push to upgrade its networks to third-generation mobility, sometimes referred to as 3.5G, through the use of HSDPA technology.
In a mobiles market swelling with more than 41 million subscribers (85 percent penetration), competition between carriers, such as SK Telecom and KTF, has driven the upgrade of mobile networks at a dizzying pace and in some cases ahead of schedule.
But it is the tech-savvy Koreans, too, that have played an important hand in the pace of innovation and change. A recent customer satisfaction survey by the industry regulator found subscribers believed existing 2.5G mobile services too slow, despite enjoying some of the fastest speeds available anywhere in the world.
Not surprisingly, customer migration to 3.5G has been swift. By June this year, 1.6 million customers were using the upgraded WCDMA networks.
Despite the maturity and size of the mobiles market, growth in the customer base is still about 5 percent and revenues grew 18 percent last year to US$20 billion.
Already Korea is working closely with neighbouring Japan and China to develop 4G standards and services as early as 2010.
According to the report, Koreans have an insatiable appetite for mobile content and applications, with more than a third using their mobiles to download music, ringtones, games and videos and almost 28 percent to pay for products and services.
The BuddeComm Korea study identifies automobile telematics, mobile banking, m-government and mobile TV broadcasting as key areas of interest.
In particular, Korean manufacturers, such as Samsung and LG Electronics, are taking a global lead in mobile TV broadcasting, also known as Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (DMB), with some 70 percent of handsets expected to be DMB-capable by the end of next year. As well, the Electronic and Telecommunications Research Institute estimates services and equipment production will have generated US$12 billion and 87,000 jobs for the DMB industry in the five-year-period to 2010.
South Korea, which has the highest number of broadband connections per capita in the world, is also quickly moving to provide pervasive next-generation broadband through its uKorea initiative (ubiquitous Korea) and its Next Generation Networks (NGN) Broadband convergence Network (BcN).
It is anticipated, once the BcN project is completed, TV broadcasts, voice telecommunications and the internet will converge into a single network with transmission speeds of 50-100Mb/s, the BuddeComm telecoms study states. "Ubiquitous networking will also be available through BcN, whereby any electronic device, such as refrigerators or digital televisions, would be able to perform as a network console, thus enabling customers to use the internet anytime and anywhere.
"People would be able to download a two-hour high-definition movie in a minute thanks to the high speed of BcN transmissions. Another attraction of BcN is its price competitiveness. Since BcN combines all conventional lines into a single network, it would save subscribers substantial amounts of money in comparison to the current situation of paying for separate subscriptions."
For more information kindly visit: http://www.bharatbook.com/bookdetail.asp?bookid=25157
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