KOREA LEADING IN WIRELESS AGAIN... WI-FI HOTSPOTS
Nokia Tests Mobile TV System... A Little Late

Have some freetime today in San Franciso. Came across these blurbs in FierceWireless. First one is on KT's WiFi network, which is the largest in the world. I'm not surprise by that but by the 375,000 subscribers it has signed up. Korea is not the land of laptops and professionals on the go like the U.S., so I didn't think there would be great traction with Wi-Fi. After reading more details from News.com, it understandable that most of the subscribers are students. The second article is about Nokia establishing its mobile TV service with a launch date of 2007. 2007?? Korea starting this service over a year ago... not really Korean pride, but just surprised how late the leading mobile company is on this service.

Korea Telecom to claim 23,000 hotspots by year's end
Korea Telecom (KT) is aggressively expanding its WiFi hotspot business. The company currently claims 12,000 hotspots in South Korea and said it plans to have 23,000 by the end of 2004. KT currently claims 375,000 WiFi subscribers. Analysts claim that KT is by far the world's leading hotspot operator. T-Mobile, by comparison, only claims 5,600 hotspots. Industry insiders claim that the relative cheap cost of broadband in South Korea, coupled with the country's small geographic size and dense urban centers, make WiFi hotspots more economically viable in this market than in many others. (sourced from News.com)

Nokia tests mobile TV system
Nokia and Dutch digital TV service provider Digitenne are testing a system for broadcasting television signals on mobile handsets. Under the terms of the trial, Nokia is equipping select handsets with digital TV receivers and Digitenne is broadcasting the signal of 24 channels. The system is expected to eventually go commercial by 2007.