Nam Joong-soo, CSO of KTF

KTF will expand its business arena to advanced countries, including the United States, Australia, and some countries in Europe, to become a top-class company in the global market, Nam Joong-soo, customer satisfaction officer (CSO) of the mobile carrier, said. "At present, our overseas business arena has been centered on such Asian countries as China, Taiwan, Indonesia, Malaysia, and India. However, we will expand the business arena to Australia, the United States, and some European countries through our accumulated overseas business experiences," said Nam in an interview with Korea IT Times. CSO Nam said that KTF plans to seek more profits by expanding its business arena from the consulting and solution export-oriented one to business alliances or direct investments. "At the same time, we are seriously considering advancing into the world's wireless Internet market directly," he said. Nam said that KTF will also make a strong push for joint advancement in foreign countries with small and medium-sized companies armed with advanced technology through a "win-win" strategy, like its strategic alliance with Bibo Telecom. "KTF will also actively push for strengthening its existing wireless data business through the active propulsion of the entertainment contents business of game, music and video this year," said the top manager of the mobile carrier. In addition to the market debut of the high performance game phone carrying a 3D multimedia function, he continued, KTF will introduce a variety of mobile game contents with mass storage and high quality. Noting that KTF is likely to post 5 billion won in its annual turnover in the next-generation game business by attracting 100,000 users in 2005, Nam said, "In 2007, the number of users will increase to 600,000-1 million, generating 52 billion won in turnover." In the following interview, CSO Nam introduced the KTF's business strategy to maximize growth, new products and services, and future projects. Q: Would you introduce the contents of the KTF's new services, such as the wire and wireless composite service aimed at the ubiquitous era and the convergence service, which enhances customers' convenience through service fusion between industries A: The sound market seems to be entering a maturity stage with the high supply ratio of over 75 percent in the near future. However, the wireless data market is expected to see an annual average growth of more than 26 percent owing to expansion of customers' needs and activation of non-human application. As convergence and ubiquitous have been made centering on mobile communication, mobile carriers are expected to develop into general communication providers, which can offer all types of services at anywhere and anytime. KTF has mapped out a strategy to provide customers, shareholders, and KTF officials, with the best advantage through the "1, 2, 3 strategy," under which it will post the highest growth, double its profits, and establish its arena in the top three new growth engine sectors: media, contents, and global. In April, KTF plans to introduce various package products by opening music portal carrying new conception in order to expand synergy effects between music services and satisfy customers' growing needs. Through the construction of individual platforms, KTF will also introduce an environment, which enables customers to make easy access to contents suitable for themselves and a new fare system. KTF also has a plan to actively foster the convergence business through strategic alliances with KT subsidiaries and other companies and development of differential business models. Q: KTF is reportedly seeking ways to maximize synergy effects in new service sectors, including DMB and portable Internet. Would you comment on the company's such efforts A: KTF is actively considering offering mobile broadcasting service by making the use of new platforms such as media flow and DVB-H and mobile communication solutions such as BCMCS and MBMS, in addition to DMB. There are worries among some analysts that WiBro and W-CDMA will enter into a competitive relationship, encroaching on profits of mobile communication. However, the WiBro market is expected to be created in the Vertical Market or small-size crowded regions, considering that WiBro is able to offer super-speed multimedia service, but it still has a problem in case of traveling at a high speed. Meanwhile, W-CDMA seems to be suitable for the Mass Market as it is able to cover a wide area economically, even though it is somewhat inferior to WiBro in terms of speed. As a result, the two services are expected to play a role as supplementary materials offering optimum services to customers according to their life style, expanding an arena of the wireless multimedia market. Q: KTF, armed with powerful wireless network technology is emerging as a leader in the global market. Would you explain your company's future plans A: KTF is expanding profits by exporting the world's top-level CDMA technology and know-how it accumulated in the domestic mobile communication market. Through direct investment or business tie-ups, we will seek new business opportunities and establish a long-term base to create profits, while securing a global leadership by enhancing the corporate value. At present, KTF is engaging in business negotiations with eight enterprises in seven countries through the offering of the consulting business concerning the overall mobile communication project and solutions, including wireless Internet platforms. We are making best efforts to export solutions and NMS systems to foreign companies. Among the projects under progress now are general consulting with eight mobile companies in Indonesia, the network consulting with Reliance Co. in India, and the 2RING consulting with UNICOM of China. In August last year, KTF concluded a strategic alliance worth $15 million with Bibo Telecom of Taiwan to offer 3G total solutions, network design and consulting businesses. Q: KTF has been actively pursuing a strategy to maximize growth. Would you explain the strategy A: In the future, KTF will pursue a qualitative change from the existing mobile communication service provider to a mobile communication and convergence company through selection and concentration, as well as the harmony of growth and effectiveness. For instance, in the wireless data business with high growth potential, we will try to change from the present simple profit model centering on data charge to a profit model focusing on fees for the use of information. At the same time, we will provide customers with Ubiquitous-type convergence services, such as U-banking, U-home, U-advertisement, U-medical treatment, and U-education, by developing the present limited services. By using the superior position of the KT Group armed with the top-level wire infrastructures in the nation, KTF will develop and offer various wire and wireless fusion services to expand its base for customers. Q: Would you introduce core projects and business plans of KTF for this year A: For the second take-off to become a leader in the upcoming convergence and ubiquitous era, we announced the mid and long-term strategy for the growth of KTF at the end of last year. Under the strategy, we will consolidate the sound business, which has entered a maturity stage, and activate the growth-leading data business, while seeking a growth through differentiated business portfolios. To expand the value chain of businesses and customers' share of time, KTF will bolster its entertainment-type content bases through direct finding of promising contents and ventures, equity investment, and joint ventures with competitive companies. Q: What is KTF's strategy to take the lead in the ubiquitous era and what are the stategy's merits and demerits A: KTF is planning to maximize growth potential through selection and concentration of core services, including entertainment-type contents and Mobile-IM (Instant Messaging). And KTF will intensively foster new promising businesses such as music portal, next-generation game, MMS, hot code/hot number, telematics, and mobile advertisement businesses. Along with this, KTF will develop and supply differentiated terminals to accommodate a variety of multimedia, including game, music, and broadcasting, and entertainment needs.