TOKYO-Korea Telecom Freetel, South Korea’s second-largest mobile carrier, launched 1XRTT technology in May, targeting to win 1 million 1X subscribers during the first year. To facilitate more advanced data services, the carrier will provide 1X EV-DO, a data-only service based on 1X, on the 1800 MHz band, followed by wideband-CDMA (W-CDMA) services on the 2 GHz band.
KT Freetel plans to launch both 1X EV-DO and W-CDMA services, two different standards for third-generation (3G) networks, which will provide up to 2 Megabits per second (Mbps) data transmission speeds. Won Pyo Hong, executive vice president, explained that W-CDMA is more mature than 1X EV-DO, and KT Freetel will provide a variety of incentives for W-CDMA users, such as attractive content, billing schemes and price plans to allure customers to W-CDMA services.
According to Hong, the carrier’s 3G strategy is to offer various grades of services to users. Hong said the firm estimates that by 2004, about 10 percent of its customers will use W-CDMA, 20 percent will use 1X service, and the remainder will continue to use IS-95 A/B, a voice-oriented service.
Although the carrier plans to deploy nationwide 1X networks quickly targeting to achieve a 98-percent population coverage by 2004, the carrier will initially limit its W-CDMA service area to large cities, including Seoul, and carefully further deploy the networks after confirming marketability.
“Unlike NTT DoCoMo, which needs to rush to move to WCDMA, we do not have any reason to rush, because we have 1X and 1X EV-DO available,” he said.
KT Freetel has invested US$400 million for launching 1X and an additional US$200 million for 1X EV-DO. Investment costs for W-CDMA will depend on the launch timing and services areas, but the carrier anticipates spending US$500 million to US$1 billion for W-CDMA equipment.
