Telecommunications companies in South Korea are beginning to offer WiBro services, a variant of WiMax, in the capital city of Seoul. This is considered the first opportunity to compare wide-area wireless network access systems with other competing technologies.
Several commercial wireless Internet services have been provided through hotspots in Seoul, but WiMax still holds several advantages. It achieves data exchange speeds of several megabits per second, with a coverage range of 1 kilometer and can operate in moving vehicles at speeds of up to 120 kilometers per hour.
WiBro will initially be established in the central areas, universities, and major public transport routes within the city. The basic service fee offered by KT Corporation is $16 per month for the first 300 MB of downloaded data, with subsequent megabytes priced at $0.07 each.
To use the service, customers will need to purchase a card costing between $170 and $300 to install in their laptops. Cards supporting other devices such as PDAs and smartphones will be available on the market in the coming months.
The main competitors of WiBro and mobile WiMax are high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) technology, an enhancement of WCDMA technology for mobile phones. HSDPA offers transmission speeds comparable to those of WiBro, but the costs may be slightly higher.
SK Telecom of South Korea plans to invest $170 million to build the WiBro network this year, while KT Corporation intends to spend up to $500 million. “We will cover all of Seoul with WiBro by next year and expand to neighboring areas by 2008,” a spokesperson for KT stated.
