Groupon recently announced liquidation of all assets of Groupon Korea, and a plan to focus all its efforts to promote its recent acquisition Ticket Monster (TMON) in Asia’s third largest e-commerce market. Groupon now joins the long list of global companies, which have failed to capture market share in South Korea. Recently (December 2012), Yahoo also shut down its Korean operations, as profitability became an issue in South Korea. South Korea is…

KT – Cisco team up for 5G network Korean telecommunications giant KT said recently that it aims to jointly develop a fifth-generation (5G) network with Cisco Systems under new corporate initiatives being pursued by KT CEO Hwang Chang-gyu. “While 5G is still just a concept rather than a reality, you should keep in mind that being proactive means thinking and acting ahead of anticipated trends,” said a KT executive. The remarks come…

LTE-A will shape our mobile broadband future, has been all over the Korean tech news for a while, and has huge scope to grow, from current download speeds of around 45Mbps to up to 300Mbps. I thought it worth taking a look at where it is now and where it is heading in the next 12 months. For additional information please access the links in the text. Basic Facts: LTE was first…

LTE-A was first launched in Korea in June 2013 and the government has just concluded it’s first LTE-A speed audit, naming SK’s service as the fastest available, in the country with the fastest mobile internet speeds in the world. There are three kinds of LTE services available. Regular LTE is a fourth-generation telecommunication service that offers data flow as fast as 75 megabits per second. LTE-A doubles the speed up to 150…

KT has recently announced that it will launch a Korea-Japan Wi-Fi automatic roaming service. The service will enable KT customers to use NTT DoCoMo’s Wi-Fi network if they go to Japan, with the same deal reciprocated for NTT DoCoMo’s clients in Korea. To date users have had to enter a user ID and a password to log on to wireless networks overseas. The automatic roaming service, however, will allow users to enjoy…

Korea’s second largest mobile carrier, KT, was named as the world’s most sustainable telecomms company by the Dow Jones Sustainability World Index (DJ-SWI). It is the third consecutive year that KT has won the award, and demonstrates a concerted drive by Korean tech conglomerates for supremacy in the global tech industry in more than just sales figures. Selection is based on scores in three main categories: Economic, environmental and social. Factors that…

Around 10 years ago, ITU said that “There are few recommendations that one can offer a country as advanced in ICT as Korea. Broadband penetration is the world’s highest.” –  and that still holds true today in 2013. 1. The Korean Telecom Market  South Korea has a driven telecom market dynamics. It has one of the fastest growth in smartphone numbers with around a 23 million increase in the span of 2…

  KT Will Spend $2.65B Upgrading Network And Create Jobs Remember how KT said they set up a fund of USD 132 million by 2017 to help smaller and mid-sized firms in Korea earlier on this year? Well, according to Yonhap News yesterday, they will spend KRW 3 trillion (approximately USD 2.65 billion). KT is more ambitious than we thought. That means that the south Korean telco is spending approximately half of the USD 5.3 billion…

beSUCCESS covers weekly news in Korea, 18 Feb.

At the end of last week South Korea’s communications watchdog turned down bids by two Korean firms to set up the country’s fourth mobile operator.

LG U+, Korea’s third-largest mobile carrier, will release the nation’s first unlimited-data plans for customers using LTE networks. From Jan. 31 to April 30, customers who switch from another provider will be eligible for the free plan, fueling the intensifying battle for new LTE customers.

As mobile phone fraud cases are increasing, SK Telecom, KT, LG U+ and organisations such as Korea Internet and Security Agency (KISA) and Korea Association of ICT Promotion have meeting discussing prevention measures for mobile loan fraud schemes.

Since 2010, SK telecom suffered a 28.3% reduction in their overall SMS service, and fears a further 32.3% decline by the end of next year if the current trend persists. Their SMS count per person dropped from 1,819 message per person in 2010 to a mere 1,268 in 2011. It is expected to continue reducing, as the count as of June 2012 was 429 messages per person.