On March 1, 2007 KTF will bring a whole new revolution to the communication industry. his is the first time in the history to complete a nationwide HSDPA network. Together, we have completed 99% installation throughout the states. March 1 will be remembered as a revolutionary day in the 130-year history of telecommunications,CEO of KTF Cho Young-chu stated in a press conference.
March 1 would be the day customers throughout the states will meet a new brand telephone, called SHOW. With SHOW, parted friends and relatives now can see each other's face while they chat. From this day, users can enjoy 99 percent of installation of High-speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) that was recently completed to provide better service to customers. HSDPA is a third generation mobile telephony protocol in the HSPA family that provides a smooth evolutionary path for UMTS-based networks allowing for higher data transfer speeds.
In order to enjoy the maximum quality of HSDPA, however, users have to change phones and change the prefix of the phone to 010. Any 011, 016, 018, or other prefix users have to lose their number and start a whole new life with a whole new number. KTF is starting with three models Thursday, March 1 which are made by Samsung, LG, and KTF. With these particular brand phones, you can even video chat in New York with your family in Korea with the same quality you would get in the country. HSDPA global roaming services will soon be pursued as soon as this easy global roaming services adopt to the systems in foreign countries. KTF seeks to increase the number to 100 countries from 47 countries within a six month period.
That is not the best thing about SHOW. SHOW will include 25 different payment plans. This is to give users options to help them find suitable plans for themselves to reduce phone bills. On top of the various kinds of payment plans, KTF will only charge 36 won per 10 seconds for video chatting payment, which is 70% cheaper than any other company. Also, SHOW will allow up to 1000 character text messages with an affordable price. Long messages (LMS) used to cost 50 won for each message sent, yet the maximum words you could sent per message was not anywhere near 1000. With SHOW, you only have to pay 30 won per text, 1000 words maximum.
The price of the phone would be affordable as well. CEO Cho predicts the price to be around 450,000 won, but the price could be reduced to 100,000 won with the subsidies KTF will provide for any customers who have been using mobile phone services for longer than 18 months.
e expect that approximately five million will sign up for HSDPA services this year. We aim to attract 54 percent of them, or 2.7 million, to be highly competitive in the telecom industry,CEO Cho claimed.
Stan Jung, an analyst pf Woori Securities expects that HSDPA will become a standard in the near future. The market consensus is that half mobile customers will use HSDPA in 2009 and most of them will use the service in 2012.
