KT "Gives Wings to WiBro" with Google Chrome Book

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.

The Introduction of LTE in Korea

As reported in the Joongang Daily, Korea's mobile service providers all have plans in place to begin offering LTE (long term evolution) service this year or next.  As shown in the accompanying graphic (click for full-size version) SK Telecom and LG U+ will introduce the service in July of this year, while KT, which is highly invested in a nationwide WiBro network, will follow in the first quarter of 2012.  Both LTE and Korea's own technology, Wibro (mobile WiMax) are fourth generation mobile technologies that deliver more speed than third generation mobile networks.   Speed translates into a much more satisfactory customer experience when using video or data-intensive mobile services.

LTE, WiBro to be Global 4G Standards

The news is out that LTE Evolution and WiBro Evolution (known as WiMax Evolution outside of Korea) have been selected as the two global standards for fourth generation mobile technology.  As reported in The Korea Herald, the decision was made at an ITU meeting in Vietnam June 9-16.  The ITU will complete developing the specific standardization framework for the two technologies by March 2011 and grant final approval in February 2012. “With Korea playing a key role in the international standardization effort, the nation will be able to lead the way in designing core technologies for the next generation,” said Kim Jeong-sam, director of the radio spectrum policy division at the Korea Communications Commission.  The research and development on WiBro Evolution has been led by Samsung Electronics and Korea's Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI).

Mobile WiMax (WiBro) Development and Exports

It is about time to review the success of Korea's home-grown mobile broadband technology, at home and in export markets.   It is called WiBro (short for Wireless Broadband) here in Korea and Mobile WiMax in other countries around the world.  It is based on the IEEE 802.16e standards and subsequent updates.

First, regarding the South Korean market, it seems a safe bet that WiBro-equipped mobile handsets will be very popular and widely used here, now that the mobile broadband market has been opened up.  People using the iPhone, Android phones or other mobile broadband-equipped handsets will place a high value on speed.  WiBro delivers speed and does so dependably.

In terms of exports, WiBro has expanded its international presence in recent months.  The WiMax Forum has announced a long list of companies backing the building of a mobile WiMax ecosystem, including Cisco, Intel, Samsung, KT, Motorola, Yota and others.  The Forum reports that wireless broadband internet deployments based on WiMax have reached 519 in 146 countries, including 95 WiMax networks deployed by 2G network operators.

Samsung announced earlier this week that it will launch its next generation mobile internet service with its Russian partner Yota in Nicaragua, starting in May.   Also earlier this month, Korea Telecom launched WiBro service in Rwanda, marking the first deployment of the technology in Africa.  The initial deployment was a wireless network for government offices in the capital city of Kigali.  According to press reports, SK Telesys, the SK group's mobile communication equipment group has exported WiBro to Jordan.  KT is providing WiBro services to Uzbekistan, and the list continues to grow.  As of September 2009, Samsung alone had provided Mobile WiMax equipment to 25 operators in 21 countries.

KCC Chief Ambivalent About WiBro

A very interesting piece in The Korea Times today about WiBro versus LTE.  WiBro, or "wireless broadband" is a locally developed variant of Mobile Wimax.  It was developed jointly with Intel and grows out of WiFi, representing the computer industry's claim to 4G mobile status.  LTE, on the other hand, is an outgrowth of W-CDMA technology and is backed by wireless companies, including Ericsson.

According to the article, some experts suggest that LTE will eventually garner 70 percent of the global market for 4G mobile services.  This despite the fact that it isn't even in the marketplace yet.  It seems to me that the real questions are (1) who will get WiBro or LTE-equipped notebooks, netbooks, handsets and modems into the marketplace first AND (2) how much consumers will value the additional speed provided by a WiBro-equipped device.

WiBro works and it appears to work just fine.   We won't know the outcome of this for another year or two, but I'd expect something more like a 60-40 or even 50-50 split of the global market between LTE and WiBRO.

The Mobile Internet is Coming: Korean Web Portals Target Mobile Phones

There is a very interesting article in today's Korea Times, detailing how major web portals in Korea are now targeting mobile phones by formatting their material for handsets.   They include

• http://m.naver.com (a new arrival)


• www.daum.net (since January)


• www.cyworld.com (Mini-cyworld last December)


• mini.paran.com (Paran, the internet unit of KT Wednesday of this week)

As the article points out, traffic to mobile portals remains miniscule as most wireless users (including yours truly) won't touch their expensive data services.  However, as it concludes, all of this will change with the arrival of the iPhone and Android phones into the Korean market.  As noted in an earlier post the mobile market worldwide is shifting not just to smartphones, narrowly conceived, but to hand-held computers with flat rates for accessing the internet.  The sooner South Korea joins this trend the better for its consumers and exporters of mobile phones.

Mergers and Convergence in Korea: KT-KTF, Android, VOIP

The merger of KT with KTF has been approved by the Korea Communications Commission. This merger is considered to be the largest ever in South Korea, outside the financial industry. From a global perspective, it is one of several steps being taken here that will push rapid convergence toward a single, fast digital network for the future. The move has several very interesting implications as follows:

• As noted in a Joongang Daily article, it will mark a shift to packaged services in South Korea's telecommunications industry. After the two firms, which split in 1996, are joined together they will sell landlines, mobile service, high speed internet and internet television as part of a bundled package.


• This merger is expected to encourage other mergers in the sector. Under this scenario, SK Telecom will merge with SK Broadband and LG Telecom will merge with LG Powercom.


• KT is reported to be working with Samsung on a handset that will be capable of operating on both 3G and WiBro networks. This has powerful implications since it means that VOIP services like Skype or the forthcoming Google Voice will be available via this phone.

The last bullet point above is very significant and seems to indicate that the Korea Communications Commission and overall Korean government policy is going to push rapidly and forcefully for full convergence into a single, interconnected digital network that merges voice, data and television, along with fixed and mobile networks.

Ohmynews, in the article cited above, suggested that the merger of KT and KTF might "open up VOIP Heaven." We'll all see about that in the coming months. However, there appears to be one major element lacking in the emerging scenario here in South Korea. It is called Google, and more specifically Android and the Open Handset Alliance. According to reports, Samsung's forthcoming WiBro phone operates on Windows Mobile. This does not bode well for its success in the marketplace, if the example of the Apple iPhone is to be taken seriously. There is a coming battle among mobile platforms and at this point it will probably eliminate Windows mobile in favor of more open platforms ---Apple iPhone, Android and Symbian. So, I suggest we all wait to see whether Samsung and LG take the bold step of introducing Wi-Bro enabled phones for the Android platform.

Korea's Stake in the Future of Mobile Broadband

The Economist has two new analyses of the mobile market in its current issue.  The first explores the growing popularity of mobile broadband, using small dongles or modems with notebook computers to access broadband networks.  Mostly, the story refers to operators of 3-G networks, who have cut charges for data services.  It does not even mention WiBro, as it is called here in Korea, or mobile WiMax as known in the rest of the world. The other article is entitled "Boom in the Bust" and deals with the remarkable popularity of the Apple iPhone and other smart phones, and the transformation currently taking place in the mobile phone industry.  In reality both of these pieces in The Economist are part of the same story.  Consumers all over the world like access to broadband internet, and the "law of mobility" is beginning to exert its force.  Frequently attributed to Russ McGuire  of Sprint-Nextel.  (download a pdf version here ) the law states that the value of any product or service increases with its mobility. A simple measure of mobility is the percent of time that a product or service is available for one's use.

It is rapidly becoming obvious to everyone that consumers like the idea of a portable internet, which is why Apple's iPhone was such a hit from the beginning, and why Google's Android platform is so important for the future internet.  Thusfar, the response of the Korean government, its major mobile service providers, and its handset makers to these developments has been rather slow, somewhat defensive and tentative.   The Apple iPhone will not even appear in this market until next month, along with lifting of the WIPI software requirement for mobile phones in South Korea.

I'd like to close this post with a larger point.  Google, as I've argued in earlier posts, is far more than a search engine.  In fact, its global dominance helps to bring into focus a number of policy issues that as convergence of media and technologies continues and we move toward the future global information society in which South Korea aims to be one of the first "ubiquitous network societies."   A new book by Peter Cowhey and Jonathan Aronson, entitled Transforming Global Information and Communication Markets: The Political  , has a very cogent argument concerning what is at stake in the current transformation of the global ICT infrastructure.  They argue that the global ICT infrastructure is in an "inflection point" where broadband is becoming ubiquitous and network components are becoming more and more modular. In such an environment it is not surprising that new services, software and content will drive the market. More specifically, they suggest that understanding the market position of a dominant firm like Google is important to understanding the technological and political-economic choices facing policymakers.   I agree and will have much more to say on this issue.  The future of mobile broadband is in fact just an interesting and important aspect of the larger evolution of a global information society in which Korea can play an important role.

More WiBro Export Success--an Auspicious Start

With the news that Samsung Electronics has signed deals to export Korea's WiBro technology to Taiwan and Kuwait, it is beginning to appear that this technology will be another big export success story. As reported in the Digital Chosun Ilbo Samsung Electronics is now involved in commercial or pilot projects with 23 firms in 19 countries, including the United States, Japan, Russia, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia, Brazil and Venezuela.>

U.S. technology market researcher ABI Research forecast that the WiBro market will grow from US$3.5 billion in 2008 to $59.6 billion in 2012, with the number of subscribers increasing from 12 million to 280 million.

I had a chance to personally test WiBRO at a recent conference in Seoul dealing with Ultra Broadband issues.  Korea Telecom put all of the conference participants on a bus and we each had a notebook computer equipped with a very compact WiBro modem.  I enjoyed the demonstration and had no trouble viewing video on CNN while the bus was cruising along the Han River at more than 100 kilometers per hour.  The "law of mobility"  or "McGuire's" law states that the value of a product increases with mobility.  A simple measure of mobility is the percent of time the product is available for your use.

I predict great success for WiBRO in Korea and in markets around the world.   The reason is that it draws on the power of the law of mobility by making the internet itself more mobile!

The Portable Internet: What's With WiBro?

The Korea Times chose an interesting headline for an article today about the prospects for Korea's homegrown portable internet technology, WiBro, as it is known domestically, and Mobile Wimax internationally.  "Will WiBro Sizzle or Fizzle?"  Although this may appear brash, I'm going to predict that, in the long run, WiBro or something very much like it will sizzle.  Furthermore, there appears to be no serious downside to the efforts of Samsung and other Korean companies to push for international approval of a mobile internet standard that originated here. 

At this moment in South Korea's rapid evolution toward the ubiquitous network society, it is a safe statement that there are two desireable characteristics of the future media environment:

• It will provide broadband internet access via mobile handsets, PCs and a variety of other devices.  The term broadband internet, as used here, means speed, as in access speeds currently available in Korea, Japan and a handful of other countries.


• To the extent possible, it will be cordless or mobile. 

As things currently stand, the only reason most people would want to plug in a cord or a network cable in order to access the internet, is to achieve an adequately fast connection.   WiBro, aka Mobile Wimax will succeed because it offers both speed and mobility.   Perhaps we're getting ahead of the story here.  There are other countries and companies in the world that may be pushing for their own versions of the "portable internet," as WiBro appropriately dubs itself.  The most notable of these is LTE, which is still several years off.

WiBro has an informative English language web site.  It contains links to several other sites that may be useful for those closely following the development of these technologies, approval of international standards, and related issues.   One is the Wimax Forum.   Another is the Telecommunications Technology Association.   Also of considerable interest is Intel's view of technologies that will enable the portable internet.