WASHINGTON-The Bush administration last week stepped up criticism of South Korea for pursuing wireless Internet standards it regards as discriminatory and harmful to U.S. companies, a move that comes as top U.S. officials prepare to meet with Chinese government representatives later this month on another trade dispute involving a Beijing-sanctioned Wi-Fi security standard that American high-tech firms say will lock them out of world’s biggest wireless market.
In the 2004 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers, the U.S. trade representative highlighted its objections with South Korea’s plan to implement the Wireless Internet Platform for Interoperability, or WIPI, and to permit only one standard for portable Internet service in the 2.3 GHz band.
USTR said U.S. concerns over WIPI “have been raised at recent bilateral meetings and the U.S. government continues to urge the Korean government to fulfill all of its bilateral and multilateral commitments related to the deployment of new standards in the market, whether or not such standards are mandatory.”
USTR accused the Korean government of inappropriately influencing the creation and domestic cultivation of the WIPI standard.
“Day-in and day-out, all around the world, the U.S. government is working aggressively to make sure barriers to U.S. goods and services are removed. The NTE report is a useful inventory of global trade barriers to understand what has been accomplished and what more needs to be done,” said Robert Zoellick, the Bush administration’s top trade official.
Qualcomm Inc., the San Diego-based CDMA developer, could take a big financial hit if WIPI is enacted because the standard would prevent South Korean consumers from accessing the firm’s BREW downloading software. However, with South Korea one of the world’s strongest supporters of CDMA technology, Qualcomm has tried to downplay its objections in the media and let USTR do its talking.
Korean giant Samsung Corp., a major CDMA phone manufacturer, would be a big winner if South Korea goes forward as planned with WIPI.
Meanwhile, U.S.-based ArrayCom Inc. and Flarion Technologies Inc. stand to be left out of South Korea’s cutting-edge high-tech market if that country settles on the lone homegrown 2.3 GHz portable Internet standard.
“ArrayCom concurs with the USTR’s description, as stated in its report, of the trade barriers in Korea which exist for the 2.3 GHz portable broadband Internet service. We continue to oppose the single-standard mandate adopted by Korea and have expressed our concerns at various levels within the Korean government. We are extremely disappointed that no roadmap has yet to be established that would lead to a mutually agreeable resolution to this issue,” said Joanne Wilson, vice president of standards at ArrayCom.
Less progress has been made on resolving the 2.3 GHz issue than on the WIPI controversy.
Still, telecom manufacturers were encouraged that disputed Korean wireless standards received prominent attention in the USTR report.
“It is right on target in that the government has highlighted the problems faced by U.S. companies in Korea,” said Jason Leuck, director of international affairs and global policy for the Telecommunications Industry Association.
On a related front, Zoellick and other top administration officials are prepping for April 21 talks here with Chinese officials on trade relations. China plans to enact a Wi-Fi security standard that is at odds with an internationally accepted standard. Intel Corp., the world’s top chipmaker, said it will boycott China’s Wi-Fi encryption standard.
USTR last month filed at complaint at the World Trade Organization, accusing China of using tax policy to favor domestic semiconductor suppliers over foreign vendors.
