SK Telecom: mobile data giant.As Korea's dominant cellular phone company, SK Telecom ranks as one of the world's biggest mobile data service players along with Japan's NTT DoCoMo (NTT Mobile Communications Network, Inc., Japan) Founded in 1991, NTT DoCoMo is a spinoff of Japan's NTT (Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation) which provides wireless services, including cellular, paging, satellite and maritime and in-flight telephone services. . Mobile data accounts for nearly 25 percent of its revenues. SK Telecom was the first in the world to commercialize CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) A method for transmitting simultaneous signals over a shared portion of the spectrum. The foremost application of CDMA is the digital cellular phone technology from QUALCOMM that operates in the 800 MHz band and 1.9 GHz PCS band. technology from Qualcomm and is now using its expertise to kick-start the next generation of telecommunications. New technology remains a key source of growth. SK Telecom launched its pilot in-vehicle telematics Originally coined to mean the convergence of telecommunications and information processing, the term later evolved to refer to automation in automobiles. GPS navigation, integrated hands-free cellphones, wireless communications and automatic driving assistance systems all come under the services in Cheju Island last year. In January, U-Media, a joint venture between SK Telecom and Japanese electronics giant Toshiba, began beaming 12 mobile-TV channels to handsets, which costs subscribers $11 a month. Early next year, it will begin the world's first WiBro services, a variant of WiMax. With nearly 19 million cellular subscribers, SK Telecom is Korea's largest cellular phone service provider with 51 percent share of the market. It is also expanding in neighboring neigh·bor n. 1. One who lives near or next to another. 2. A person, place, or thing adjacent to or located near another. 3. A fellow human. 4. Used as a form of familiar address. v. Asian countries. SK Telecom launched a cellular service in Vietnam and has a joint-venture service in China with Unicom. It also has cellular service affiliates in Cambodia and Mongolia. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] In other countries such as Taiwan, it is exporting its platform to existing operators. It will enter the U.S. market later this year in a $440 million joint venture with EarthLink as a mobile virtual network operator A Mobile Virtual Network Operator (MVNO) is a company that provides mobile (sometimes called wireless or cellular) telephone service but does not have its own allocation of the radio frequency spectrum nor all of the infrastructure required to provide mobile telephone service. . SK-EarthLink will initially sell services that are already offered by EarthLink for devices like RIM's BlackBerries and Dell Computer's Treos, as well as wireless laptop Internet access See how to access the Internet. cards. Later in the year, the venture aims to introduce some of the cell phone services now popular in Korea, such as music, video streaming See streaming video and video stream. , real-time traffic information and even a GPS-based system. One of the unique characteristics of SK Telecom is that it is not only a cellular service provider; it also owns a handset manufacturing company through SK Teletech. In addition, the company has been investing in entertainment and gaming firms to beef up its content, which is available for distribution over its devices. So the combination of strengths in these different fields is expected to result in strong growth ahead. |
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