Kim Shin-bae, president of SK Telecom

SK Telecom, the nation's top mobile carrier, is placing first priorities on the activation of the WiBro market and differentiation of services for customers, said Kim Shin-bae, president of SK Telecom. "In line with this, SK Telecom has built a foundation to provide customers with inexpensive services by maximizing the use of the existing infrastructure and saving investment expenses" Kim said in an interview with The Korea IT Times. SK Telecom has already saved investment costs by 774.1 billion won (approx. $755 million) by making the best use of its existing infrastructures, including base stations, exchange stations and transport networks. President Kim said, "SK Telecom plans to begin the WiBro service for commercial use in Seoul from June 2006, and expand the areas available for the service. In 2009, we plan to expand the service regions to 84 cities in the country." At the same time, he continued, SK Telecom will actively push for the common use of base stations and networks with Hanaro Telecom, the nation's second-largest broadband operator, in order to save costs and return more benefits to customers. "SK Telecom and Hanaro will share their base stations and access networks for WiBro nationwide excluding Seoul and metropolitan cities. In Seoul and metropolitan cities, SK Telecom and Hanaro will each set up their own WiBro infrastructures but the two entities will bisect the remaining 77 areas east-west and establish joint facilities to reduce investment costs," the president said. In the interview below, Mr. Kim revealed SK Telecom's strategy to push for the WiBro business and the nation's top mobile carrier's position on the government's selection of companies to garner the WiBro licenses. Q: Would you comment on the strategy of SK Telecom to provide customers with differentiated services A: As part of its strategy to offer differentiated services, SK Telecom will provide specialized portals most suitable for handsets and PDA-type terminals, whose needs are high in the WiBro market. SK Telecom now offers the basic service, which allow users to make Internet connection in the mobile status through WiBro, In addition, SK Telecom plans to offer such information services through the WiBro specialized portals as messaging, video, music, game, and location-based services, as well as the Biz services, including B2B and M2M solutions. By developing such new services, SK Telecom projects to provide customers with a variety of services suitable for the future trend. At the same time, SK Telecom will seek activation of the WiBro market to offer contents most suitable for WiBro from the beginning stage by making the use of its abundant contents pool (4,670 menus and 690,000 contents). Along with this, SK Telecom plans to help customers expand the scope of their selection by offering existing mobile phones, satellite DMB, and super-speed Internet, as well as various fusion products. In a nutshell, SK Telecom aims at differentiating its services through offering various terminals centered on the handset type to satisfy customers' needs. Q: With the introduction of the IP network, a characteristic of the WiBro network, it is feared that it will infringe on users' information. Do you have any plans to prevent this happening A: SK Telecom plans to build a powerful information protection system to prevent such possible infringe of users' information in advance. We plan to obtain certificates for the management systems of individuals' private information and the WiBro system from the Ministry of Information and Communication. Q: Do you have any plans to upgrade the services offered by SK Telecom A: By making the best use of our 20-year experience in the operation of wireless networks, we plan to construct the optimum WiBro network and offer top-level services to our customers. SK Telecom will focus its investment on major cities with high demands for super-speed and mass storage data through prior demand investigations and enhance its investment efficiency. In particular, we plan to build an optimum network by utilizing the MAXIM, a storage design instrument of radio station developed by SK Telecom, and the CellPlan, a wireless network design instrument most suitable for radio wave environment in Korea. Q: Would you explain your company's plan to explore new markets

SK Telecom WiBro

A: SK Telecom plans to explore new markets by making investments at proper time in such mutual supplementary services, such as WiBro, ECDMA, and satellite DMB. According to the results of our survey of customers, WiBro is regarded as the service, which can overcome customers' complaints on the transmission speed and fares of wireless Internet. Accordingly, WiBro is expected to develop further in a mutual supplementary manner with the existing service. The offering of WCDMA will be focused on such Telephony services as sound and video telephones covering the entire country. It will also provide middle and low-speed data services additionally. WiBro is a data-exclusive service that will be offered in 84 major cities in the country. It can offer a variety of services utilizing high-speed and mass storage characteristics, including VoD, MoD, premium MMS, network games, and Ad-merce. Q: Would you explain the position of SK Telecom on the government's selection of enterprises to obtain WiBro licenses A: Based on our 20-year-long experiences and know-how in the operation of mobile communication, SK Telecom executives and officials made their best efforts to map out the WiBro business plan.

SK Telecom WiBro

For successful commencement of the WiBro commercial service and activation of the domestic WiBro market, we will carry out investment plans faithfully according to the presented business plan. At the same time, we will continue going all-out to provide customers with optimum services. In line with this, SK Telecom will exert doubled efforts to provide customers with best services through the construction of optimum infrastructures and differentiated contents. Along with this, SK Telecom will build a firm foundation to offer inexpensive services to customers by reducing investment expenses by making the best use of existing infrastructures. Through contents Pool and CP accumulated through the wireless Internet business, we will also push for differentiation of services as part of our efforts to activate the WiBro service from an initial stage.