3G Mobile Technology Is Catching On

Audi Korea staffer Lee Yun-kyung, who often travels overseas on business, has bought a 3G mobile phone because it’s easy to sign up for the roaming service. The service is not wide open, but it also allows subscribers to send text messages and make video calls from Europe to Korea, a marked improvement from 2G phones that permitted voice calls only.
The market for 3G mobile communication is emerging, as closely watched as new “killer applications” in the early 2000s. A “killer application” is such a big hit product or service that it sweeps all other rivals aside and reorganizes the market. Then, mobile operators around the world poured some trillions into spectrum auctions. Korea, with SK Telecom, KT and LG Telecom, was no exception, but the fever fizzled out when the dotcom bubble burst. Several years on, now armed with improved technology, the telecoms are stepping up 3G service marketing again to find a breakthrough from the saturated 2G market.
European 3G
As of June this year, the number of subscribers to 3G mobile services worldwide was more than 218 million. Among them, the number of subscribers using the W-CDMA service based on an European technology is about 141 million, and the number using the U.S. based CDMA EV-DO service is 77 million. As expected, the European 3G mobile service is more popular.
But in the future, such classification into European or American will be meaningless, experts say. Both 3G mobile services originated from a common technology called CDMA, and as 3.5G moves on to 4G, they are expected to be integrated or at least become inter-operable. Dual-mode or dual-band cell phones which apply both technologies are already in the market.
Japan is seeing the fastest-growing 3G market. Its largest mobile operator NTT Docomo gathered a total of 38 million subscribers for the 3G WCDMA mobile service by June this year, the most of any country. Another Japanese operator, KDDI, has 16 million subscribers for an EV-DO technology followed by Softbank with 10 million subscribers with a WCDMA-based service. Among the 62 million subscribers of U.S. operator Verizon Wireless, 27.5 million signed up for the EV-DO 3G service. The British operator Vodafone has 18.5 million 3G subscribers, and Hong Kong's Hutchison has 16 million. At home, KTF has 2 million subscribers to its 3G service while SK has 1 million.
The worldwide mobile industry expects average revenue per unit (ARPU) to increase as it moves on to 3G mobile services. KTF CEO Cho Young-chu says, "Our 3G mobile service SHOW's ARPU is US$46.3, higher than the 2G service with $42." NTT Docomo's ARPU is $22.60, KDDI's $27.10 and Hutchison's $18.34.
Source: chosun.com