Amid all of the industry discussion about LTE, it seems that many have relegated mobile WiMax (a locally developed technology referred to as WiBro here in Korea) to a future market niche, mainly in developing countries around the world. However, here in Korea, where major mobile service providers have been building out their WiBro networks nationwide, an interesting development has been announced by KT. According to a major electronics newspaper, Korea Telecom has chosen the Google Chrome Book as the main device for its 4G WiBro Service.
“We are planning to launch the Chrome Book in Korea in the latter half of this year and the whole new laptop especially suitable for cloud computing environments will be marketed as a package along with our WiBro router Egg,” said KT, adding, “We are also giving a thought to releasing the Chrome Book having a built-in WiBro communications chip in cooperation with handheld makers.” KT is also mulling over linking the U-Cloud, its own cloud computing service, with the laptop.
Having used WiBro a few years ago on a bus moving along the Han River at over 70 kilometers per hour, I expect that a WiBro equipped Chrome Book might be very popular indeed.