South Koreans to meet SIP based Internet phones

Great Human Software (GHS), which is a Korean Internet phone service provider, revealed its new plan to provide Korean first SIP based Internet phone. SIP based Internet phone has better features compared to existing counter parts such as, better QoS, more suitable for multimedia functions and so on.
GHS is planning to add new services step by step, that is, starting from voice call at the beginning stage, after that adding video call function and then multimedia conference function, finally reaching to an integrated messenger phone by the end of this year.
GHS is very confident for itself to catch up with Skype, the world first internet phone service provider, by 2010.
VoIP phone is getting popular more and more in Korea with its low cost. The number of VoIP users is more than 180,000 in January increased more 30% than previous month. However, until now, Korean customers had complaints about its poor quality compared wireline phone.
Korean internet phone users can meet new internet phone service that is different from what they have had soon.
The Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) is an application-layer control (signaling) protocol for creating, modifying, and terminating sessions with one or more participants. These sessions include Internet telephone calls, multimedia distribution, and multimedia conferences." It was originally designed by Henning Schulzrinne (Columbia University) and Mark Handley starting in 1996. In November 2000, SIP was accepted as a 3GPP signaling protocol and permanent element of the IMS architecture. It is widely used as a signaling protocol for Voice over IP, along with H.323 and others.

Samsung revealed new Mobile WiMAX terminals

During the CTIA Wireless 2007, Mobile WiMAX was the most spotlit technology due to the announcement of new terminals from Samsung and the detailed plans of Mobile WiMAX service from Sprint Nextel. Samsung revealed its new Mobile WiMAX terminals such as, cell phone, smart phone, PCMCIA card at the event. Meanwhile, Sprint Nextel said that it is going to start its Mobile WiMAX commercial service from the end of this year in 19 major cities. In order to provide nationwide commercial service, Sprint has signed on contracts with 3 major vendors, which are Samsung, Motorola and Nokia. Especially, Samsung will provide equipment for 5 east cities of the country including Washington, Boston, Philadelphia. In addition, Samsung has been selected as a terminal and chipset provider as well. Accordingly, it is expected that Samsung will maintain its dominance on Mobile WiMAX market with it leading system and handset technologies. In other hand, Samsung is also planning to offer its new Mobile WiMAX terminals in South Korean market from this April so that South Korean people can meet new wireless broadband internet world earlier than its counterparts in the US. Taking more detailed look at Korea, KT, which is the first broadband operator in Korea, has announced that it would expand its Mobile WiMAX coverage to the whole metropolitan area until the end of this month. And it is going to provide various terminal types such as, CDMA+Mobile WiMAX DBDM handsets, HSDPA+Mobile WiMAX DBDM handsets as well as Samsung’s new type’s Mobile WiMAX terminals introduced during CTIA.
In my opinion, it would be a good idea for Sprint Nextel to benchmark Korean market and KT’s Strategies for the success of its Mobile WiMAX business in the US.

Let's Google on our Cell Phones

It would be amazing if we could meet ‘Google’ on our own cell phones to use ‘Google Search’, ‘Google Map’, ‘gmail’ and ‘blogging’ same as we are doing on computers at our home. Surprisingly, it is not a dream, customers are able to see cell phones that have googling functions. Samsung and LG, both are South Korean handset makers, announced that they had signed on a contract with Google for embedding Google’s internet services into their cell phones.
In case of Samsung, it already released Google phone in Europe at the beginning of this year. Meanwhile, LG is planning to provide its Google embedded phones by the end of this year for all over the world.
This contract with Google is one of their strategies to prepare the mobile 2.0 era. Moreover this is a good news for customers who need to google anytime, anywhere.
South Korean handset makers are trying to go ahead in their field.

Visual Radio on DMB

Have you heard of the visual radio? Maybe not. It is a new DMB servicethat will be provided in Korea. South Korean T-DMB service companies have some audio channels. There are many people who prefer listening to radio programs to watching TV programs for a long time via their DMB devices. With this trend, Korean companies are trying to offer picture frame during their radio programs. They think that this new service will attract more customers. As an example of this service, users can read lyrics while listening to music. In addition, they can read information about the song itself and the singer. And every program can be delivered with text for some people who have difficulty in listening.
It is just beginning in Korea. Currently, operators are spending their time agonizing what is better and more attractive to Korean users.
Even though Korean DMB technology has evolved from DAB technology in Europe, it has better technical features more than DAB since they use different technologies for audio data compression. Korean DMB uses BSAC that can provide better quality of audio with narrower frequency than DAB. Moreover, it uses QVGA technology for picture compression rather than JEPG so that it can provide more picture frames with the same frequency bandwidth.

Movie Clip UCC on DMB

Korean mobile TV users can enjoy UCC movie clips on their DMB devices. MGoon, which is a UCC movie clip portal company, has just started its new S-DMB program named 'Welcome to UCC' via SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) DMB network.
Korean users can meet this program on every Friday for 30 minutes.The program shows best UCC contents that internet users has uploaded to MGoon portal site for last one week.
While until now most DMB programs are composed of rebroadcasting programs, this program is just fitted for DMB so that Korean people can enjoy very unique program they can not see via television.
I think this is a new convergence service between broadcasting and internet. In addition, it is on the same line that our society is heading for.
Korea is getting ready to provide convergence services to its citizens by making several new tries and implementing new policies, such as promotion of combined services and new technologies- Mobile WiMAX, DMB and so on.
I am sure that Korea is the best market for telecommunication operators to benchmark.

It's Possible to See New Combined Services in Korea

It will be possible for South Korean operators to provide a combined service from this July. MIC (Korean Regulator) announced that it plans to allow operators to sell a combined service. In addition, existing wireline users are also able to move to VoIP service without changing their home-phone number.
It is expected that Korean users can enjoy several new combined services such as ‘IP-TV + Wireline Broadband’, ‘WiBro + Wireline Broadband Internet’, ‘WiBro + HSDPA’ services within this year.
KT(First Korean Wireline Operator) and SKT (First Korean Wireless Operator) are planning to get into the market with somewhat aggressive business model by providing new combined services between WiBro, WCDMA and their existing services.
MIC expects that this plan would make telecommunication market more competitive and the price go down gradually.

New Business Model with SNS and UCC

Korean companies have started to take actions to provide UCC(User Created Contents) for SNS(Social Networking Service) Site as a new business model.
Cyworld, which is a South Korean SNS site announced yesterday that it is going to release new version of Cyworld Studio, a movie clip and image edit tool, for its Cyworld users.
On this version, many new functions have been added to the existing version, especially for editing movie clips. These new features are as followings:
- 8 video effects that enable users to make the original movie clips slower and faster,
- 11 text effects with more fonts, changing and adding colors function,
- section edit function, and so on.
In addition to these new video effects, it has new sound effects so that users can add sounds made by their own to movie clips.
In South Korea, more and more users are getting interested in making and editing their own movie clips. Moreover, they want to upload their own movie clips to their Cyworld homepage. Via this new version of software, Koreans are able to communicate with friends on their homepage and attract more visitors.Cyworld has just started making a synergy effect between SNS and UCC with this new software.