DMB @ DMZ : earth, wind &... fire !

South Korea's 6 Terrestrial Digital Multimedia Broadcasting (T-DMB) service providers will be the top 3 networks (KBS, MBC and SBS) and 3 consortia : Korea DMB (CBS plus a team of enablers : Haansoft, GAEASOFT, Sinjisoft, Feelingk...) YTN DMB (behind YTN, Korea's leading news channel, about 20 investors including MTI, TBN - Traffic Broadcasting Network -, GAEASOFT, Kwangju KBS, PSB...), and KMMB (the merger of MMB and KDMB consortia : ANTV & co, led by net&tv's CEO, a promoter of MPEG-4). Among the losing consortia : ucube, the NDMB Plus consortium and his partners, including BBS (Buddhist Broadcasting System)...
The Korean Broadcasting Commission expects commercial launches in may 2005 for Seoul, the same TTM as for Satellite DMB ; T-DMB with a free service covering Seoul only (the rest of the country next year) and S-DMB with a national coverage but a W13,000 monthly fee (not to mention an initial W20,000 connection charge)... plus some not so exclusive contents including those of KBS, MBC, SBS and YTN...
Anyway, Korea Inc is again at it in full gear : the ETRI expects 80,000 jobs to be created by DMB, and the usual doomsayers must realize handsets will be ready. Remember Samsung's portable S-DMB movie theater ? Just to keep one step ahead of their competitors (LG, Pantech & Curitel), the company just announced a T-DMB laptop with a brand new WHQL logo (FYI that's for Windows Hardware Quality Labs, not Windows Horrible Quality Loopholes).
One more techno added to the export-prone Korean Air Wave. Next time Ahn Jung-Hwan comes back home to play some soccer or sell some shampoo, he won't need any special spray to have his hair curl.