SEOUL, KOREA - Despite the positive economic prospect, the actual economic sentiment is worsening, which makes decreasing the household expenses very vital to a family of which communication expense plays a major role. The average user spends an average of $600 dollars per year on cell phone bills and the average smart phone users spends an average of $900 dollars a year on cell phone bills alone.
Reducing communication expense has been an important topic for consumers for the past few years, but there has been little change in pricing due to the power held by communication companies and the high expenses of building the infrastructures related with LTE etc.. People are wondering if it is possible to decrease their telecommunication bills, and not lose the quality they are accustomed to and the answer is “Yes”, the price could be cut in half with increase in quality and speed of data communication through an socio-economic approach called Social Capital.
What is “Social Capital”
The economy evolve towards a period of strong investments in efficient infrastructures and processes of production that add new technologies, and allow to improve the efficiency in the production of products and services, which is based on three factors: innovation (Innovation Capital), new technologies within information and communication (Technological Capital) and knowledge (Human Capital). This economy is established on the knowledge shown by individuals and organizations. It is within organizations that information and knowledge are spread and assimilated. In this type of economy, a new productive structure appears, in which traditional productive factors are left aside and knowledge becomes the main element towards competitiveness thanks to the technologies within information and communication and some other powerful ways of diffusion. And technology is regarded as an endogenous rather than exogenous factor of economic growth.
Here comes new socio-economic approach: SOCIAL CAPITAL, founded on INNOVATION CAPITAL, TECHNOLOGICAL CAPITAL and HUMAN CAPITAL which is causing changes within social relations, where alterations in labour market, ideological and cultural effects, institutional and political changes and the individual’s new ways of relation with their environment have an influence on the sociological and institutional grounds of the nation.
Social Capital is the function or ability of a group of individuals - Organization, Company, Society - to create relational processes with a positive effect on economic development. When one refers to the concept of social capital, one means the group of factors - Values, Regulations or Interactions - inherent to a particular environment or company, and that makes coordination and cooperation easier so as to obtain mutual benefits.
Social Capital holds that universal social programs are harmful to economies because these large programs shrink capital markets. Many European economies built on the universal socialism model suffer from market interference across the economy. High taxation for universal social programs shrinks the overall capital market thereby shrinking the functional economy. So Government should behave itself like one big firm to manage the public sector and the nation in total to create greater profit opportunities for entrepreneurs. In order for realizing the social capital system, the Government must take an initiative role of corporate management system, and invest in desirable future industry or technology for changing society toward richer and happier state.
For business, Social Capital is seen as the ability for a company to have or create positive, healthy development. Corporations that give back to society, through positive message campaigns, or by factoring in social considerations invariably create an environment more conducive to maximizing profits. People seeing advertising with a social capitalistic message link the product with the positive feelings they get from the advertising. Business will only increase collective profits as consumer and investors see responsible business actions and take it into account when purchasing goods from the company or providing capital.
On a micro level Social Capital suggests that best business practices should cater to the needs of consumers, including the needs of workers as the bedrock of consumption. The exploitation of ever cheaper pools of labor with no regard to maintaining consumption results in market failure in the form of a tragedy of the commons. For Aboriginal communities that are participating in business, Social Capital is a community-owned business that employs community members and gives back directly to the community, building capacity and self worth.
Social Capital potentially appears as a generator of new paradigms. A simple way to assess the essence and strength of this emerging paradigm is by means of interpreting human organizations or societies as a network. People are nodes and the different relationships among people are the links between nodes. Given the so far existing paradigms, the usual trend is to focus on the nodes and only then on the relationships. The ability of an organization or society to produce ‘value’ –either pecuniary or any other – is naturally associated to the ability of its members to produce that very ‘value’. Thus, the ‘network value’ results from the sum of the ‘value of its members’.
A Common Carrier on Social Capital
The 4th Generation (hereinafter referred to as 4G) Common Carrier, namely, “국민의 통신 추진 사업단 (The Consortium for the Public Communication)” (in English, it has another title with another meaning, GWCC, that is, Global WiBro-Community Consortium, which is in concord with a Mega-Trend Business of the Korean Government) is now appearing as Social Capital. The raison d'etre of the 4G Common Carrier is not only providing the lowest rates and the highest quality for all calls and data communications, but also generating a new paradigm.
We may summarize the 4G Common Carrier visions into a single definition, encompassing key features foreseen for the 4G. Communication. The 4G will be a fully IP-based integrated system of systems and network of networks achieved after the convergence of wired and wireless networks as well as computer, consumer electronics, communication technology, and several other convergences that will be capable of providing 100 Mbps and 1 Gbps, respectively, in outdoor and indoor environments with end-to-end QoS and high security, offering any kind of services anytime, anywhere, at affordable cost and one billing.
The 4G Common Carrier Communication Company, which is based on the above 4G Communication Technologies, will play roles as Innovation Capital, Technological Capital and Human Capital, and convergently establish Social Capital. GWCC will make a mammoth enterprise with the authorized capital of USD 3 billion.
