Do Seamless 5G Communications Start With Flawless 5G PR?

Last March, NTT DoCoMo, KT, and China Mobile announced technical collaboration on 5G, each one with an Olympic event in mind: Pyeongchang 2018 for Korea, Tokyo 2020 for Japan, Beijing 2022 for China.

China Mobile, who started 5G development 5 years after DoCoMo, is clearly the laggard here. But by its sole presence, the World's biggest operator already brings considerable leverage for the standardization as well as for the ramp up phases, securing the full involvement of an ever progressing Huawei*.

NTT DoCoMo just presented at the Yokosuka Research Park the results of its recent trials**:
- on October 13 with Nokia Networks (2 Gbps transmission on 70 GHz, in Roppongi Hills, with the help of "two new technologies: beamforming, which focuses radio waves in a specific direction, and beam tracking to control beam direction according to the mobile device's location" - beamform me up, Scottie!),
- on October 26 with Fujitsu (multi-BS, multi-device 11 Gbps on 4.6GHz),
- on November 12 with Samsung (2.5 Gbps reception on 28 GHz, in a moving vehicle in Suwon),
- on November 18 with Huawei (MU-MIMO transmission of 43.9bps/Hz/cell, outdoor in Beijing), and
- on November 19 with Ericsson (MIMO 10 Gbps reception on 15 GHz).

A concise and impressive display, and a nice PR operation for a leader willing to show it covers all the bases. I'm curious to see how KT follows. In a nation already 70% converted to 4G LTE, Korea's #2 mobile operator has been the most vocal about 5G, and even about 4.5G following the launch of GiGA LTE last June. The names of Samsung, Ericsson-LG, Alcatel-Lucent and Huawei have been announced for collaborations at the new 5G Research and Development Center (in Umyeon-dong, Seocho-gu, Seoul), and such technos as MIMO, Millimeter Wave, 3D beamforming have already been tested, like multipoint transmission in a moving car (with Ericsson last May, Distributed MIMO, 2 Gbps).

KT also demonstrated 'core technologies' for 5G (5G drone, 5G hyper-virtual reality, 3D hologram), which got a few Korean media confused between 5G-friendly services and 5G 'networks'***.

GiGA LTE or 5G? "Drone Ski Jumping with 5G Network" feeds the confusion

That's one of the differences between DoCoMo's 'engineer/product/provider' PR and KT's 'marketer/service/user' PR. 

We already saw how the pedagogy of 2.5G, 3G, or 4G worked, and we already know that quantum leaps at the operator's level can seem mere upgrades at the user's level. Let's not fret over hair-splitting debates between 'post-4G', 4.5G and 'pre-5G'.

mot-bile2015

* ZTE focuses on 4.5G ("pre-5G" deal with SoftBank)
** "DOCOMO Successfully Conducts 5G Trials in Actual-use Environments - Trials carried out with Nokia Networks, Samsung, Ericsson, Fujitsu and Huawei" (NTT DoCoMo 20151126) - see also "DOCOMO 5G White Paper" (NTT DoCoMo 201407)
*** e.g. "KT demonstrates 5G network at National Assembly" (Korea Times 20150902)

In Memoriam Minitel

Tomorrow, they pull the plug. At long last, Minitel will finally be put out of its misery.

This box materialized France's Videotex service Teletel, arguably the world's most successful predecessor to the web. Imagine, in the early 80s, elder citizen in rural areas connecting every day to consult their bank accounts, to purchase train tickets, or to chat in (sometimes naughty) fora. Imagine, in the early 80s, a thriving online ecosystem full of editors, developers, service providers, online advertising agencies... The loser was the enduser, of course, who was charged heavily for every minute online. But down the road, the pedagogy of the market was done (complete with the strident sounds of dial-up connections).

Minitel turned out to be both a blessing and a curse for France. In the early 90s, the Minitel lobby managed to prevent the French government from investing in the internet because the business model was highly profitable for the operator (then the PTT monopoly, now France Telecom), as well as for the biggest service providers (fellow public owned companies like SNCF, the banks...). But internet laggard France would catch up once its ecosystem migrated to the web, rich of a long experience in online services. Heck. Even a short one did the trick for me: working for France's leader in online gaming back in 1993-94 bulletproofed me for the madness that followed. And because I experienced the last throes of the Minitel, I could tell why such media darlings as AOL or NTT DoCoMo's i-mode would eventually fail (the latter even benchmarked the Minitel's business model and proprietary system).

We frogs loved to hate this French-Franc-guzzling old timer, with its screen and keyboard stuck in the 80s, stubbornly squatting next to our cool new DECT phones.

Now we'll long for the quaint touch of Minitel's rectangular keys each time we visit the museum of ancient communications.


mot-bile 2012

Big Fun v. Big Data (Seoul Digital Forum 2012 - Day I)

Over the past quarter of a century, I've survived countless seminars and conferences on innovation, most often as an attendee, sometimes in a different role (organizer, speaker, moderator...), but never with a "Press" badge hanging from my neck. I did just that yesterday. Just for a change, and for fun. What I didn't expect was a trip down memory lane.

First of all, let's set things straight:
0) (to those who knew me in my previous lives) I'm not missing the old times, simply enjoying it, as I've always done ever since I was a teenager. When you're into innovation, you always learn from such fora. And as usual I'm not as much interested in new gizmos (SDF is not the kind of vehicle for that anyway) as in the evolution of the ecosystem, and particularly how it is perceived by its key players, by newcomers, by outsiders.
1) I didn't steal that badge. This is the 9th Annual Seoul Digital Forum, and I happen to blog about Seoul (SeoulVillage.com) as well/poorly as about innovation (mot-bile)*. Besides, ever the caring city for its own diverse ecosystem, Seoul Metropolitan Government recently appointed me as a friendly neighborhood media. For good measure I even brought my old camera (I spared you the press-card-in-the-fedora-hat-band part).
2) I'm an author and a conceptor, not a journalist. I'm not covering an event, just feeding my poor brain with stimulating bits that, at the other end of the system, usually come out as junk as silly and useless as K-pop, only less entertaining, and with more traces of biased opinions in it. If you happen to read it, that's your problem. And if you like it, that's a problem for your shrink to solve.
3) As it turns out, when you have a "Press" badge, your body is also fed with stimulating bits in a cosy Press Room. But you quickly burn the said bits between levels B1 (Vista Hall, Keynotes) and 4F (Art Hall, Press Conferences). And perks are balanced by the fact that if you want to get a good spot, you apparently have to wake up in the middle of the night. My initial spot was really really bad: believe me, you don't want to have Steve Ballmer so close to you.

Seoul Digital Forum 2012 delivered the goods, kicking off with an impressive roster**. Day I started with a guest star who, for a reason that still baffles me, was dubbed a "visionary". Of course, Steve Ballmer is by no means a visionary: this hulk of a boasting salesman is more into products, functionalities and business management than into human beings and vision. Not even convincing as an industry (ex)leader. But life is unfair: nowadays, targeting 450 million devices doesn't sound that sexy when 900 million people are already familiar with the Facebook interface.

Steve B. left to a certain Brad McCabe the Steve J. part of his sales pitch for Windows 8. Tough Jobs, even if Android and Google are the main competitor, not Apple. Brad sounded very happy when he mentioned brand new apps "right out of the box"... but that's precisely a vocabulary Microsoft should ban in places like this. You're not supposed to be shipping boxes anymore, and you don't want people to visualize Skydrive as a UPS truck navigating the cloud (with Google Sky or Google MistView?). That said, Windows n does propose interesting features that Windows n-1 didn't have, starting with the 'blue screen' part of the demo (now a classy grey signals the usual glitch). That was my first stop down memory lane.

I certainly didn't expect disruptive points of view from Warren EAST (ARM) or Mike HARRIS (Gartner) either, only a fair and balanced appreciation of a very wide array of sectors where both maintain a now exoticly limited role in the chain. Both specialists confirmed the obvious market trends (did I mention the cloud?), except of course their own shrinking businesses. For this second station along memory lane, I thought about all those players who managed to survive in such an evolutive environment without really evolving themselves.

Bell Labs also lost some of their luster over the past decade, narrowing their scope to remain competitive in key areas in spite of a struggling mother company (Alcatel-Lucent). But Bell Labs remain a very special player in RD, with a focus on vision and values. And here, at a time when pure research is sacrificed on the altar of short term profits, talent is still measured by surprise more than results. This may sound like happy hypey talk from a Silicon Valley youngster, but Jeong KIM is a bashful, soft spoken leader, truly willing to promote well being at all levels (physical, mental, societal). Yes, technology does save lives, but it's also becoming ever more pervasive (and even intrusive, for instance with somatic network implants), and generating an ever increasing volume of information. All this means a bigger impact zone, higher stakes, higher risks of privacy breaches at the micro level, or massive destruction at the macro level. As an echo to the Big Data promise of managing the unfathomable, KIM quoted Asimov: 'science gathers knowledge faster than society gathers wisdom'. In that context more than ever, a sound education proves crucial. Memory lane station 3: in the eyes of Mr KIM, I saw the wisdom I met in so many researchers who really care.

On a lighter note, Phil LIBIN announced that he'd just signed the lease for Evernote's Seoul office, and that new talents were welcome. His 4 year old start-up keeps gaining new fundings and new users (32 millions as we speak), and the founder himself seems to have gained a few kilos in the process. Can LIBIN's "second brain" (that's how he describes Evernote) keep growing at a faster pace than his body? I was almost wondering when I heard him disregard competition as something he should not worry about - a diplodocus kind of reasoning if I ever heard one (and boy did I hear some as a former strategic intelligence nerd - memo lane station 4). But Evernote's CEO seems to be developping new synapses and neurons (or, as he puts it, A.I. as in "Augmented Intelligence") all right, and particularly in Korea, where a local cellco could soon follow NTT DoCoMo, and where a partnership with a major manufacturer covering a wide array of devices could help him develop an even sexier and more seamless user experience. When I asked him up to where he wanted his second brain to grow, LIBIN answered that Evernote would help users think smarter, that soon suggestions would come to them. And as I pointed out the risk of giving in to Big Data, he said, in substance, that it was not compatible with Evernote's DNA. Let's see how Evernote evolves, evolution being a process relying most heavily on genetic mutations.

Speaking of a major Korean manufacturer covering a wide array of devices, Samsung was represented yesterday by CHANG Donghoon: the head of the design team that delivered the Haptic or Galaxy series is confirming the user-centric approach of a company willing to make the most of foldable displays (remember flexible AMOLED?), sensors, context awareness, invisible and transparent technologies, seamless transitions, natural interactions... That brought me further down memory lane: we'll always be staring at exciting stuff, like what Pranav Mistry does at the MIT Media Lab with his Sixth Sense prototype, and for the magic to work and the engine to rock and roll, there must always be some level of reality we've not quite reached yet.

Reality hit home a long time ago for mobile operators, so I was surprised to hear SK Telecom CTO BYUN Jae-woan mention as something new the fact that cellcos were not at the center anymore, and that they had to abandon their telco mindsets, to reconsider their environment, the way they defined themselves. Memory lane, continued: I really enjoyed working on it in the late 90s for a major player, and was saddened to see SKT waste their considerable advance in the middle of the noughties when they forgot to adapt to a more open environment.

Yesterday, the moment I really felt home was when Ben CERVENY (frog design) pleaded guilty: yes, plays and games are major drivers for innovation. Yes, tech design IS game design, and yes, futility can lead to utility (and yes, to achieve that it takes a lot of work and energy). Memory lane: the first start-up I survived (back in 1993-94) was the French leader in online gaming, and the ultimate lab that got me ready for everything that came after. As it turned out, the same company popped up a few stations later: our marketing used to rely on both Big Data and anthropology, and here was Intel's Genevieve BELL, an enthusiastic anthropologist, showing pictures of both the idealized and the actual home environment of TV viewers. One one side, an impossibly neatly sitted Ingals family smiling from their sofa, on the other a pot-bellied couch potato staring from a jungle of a room. Genevieve commented on the way electronic devices were treated very much the same way our anthropologist pointed out the location of the Minitel in a customer's messy living room.

A good forum on innovation must be spectacular and entertaining, and we had the right people for that:
- Hiroshi ISHIGURO and his more or less humanoids (Geminoid, Telenoid, Elfoid, and, as the ultimate alien, Ishiguroid himself),
- Aaron KOBLIN (Google Creative Lab) and his worldwide web of artworks,
- Marc ABRAHAMS (Ig Nobel Prize) and his Miss Sweetie Poo. Note that all forum organizers should use this major innovation: have a 8 year old girl come to the speakers each time she thinks they talk too much, repeating "please stop, I'm bored" until they give up. Low tech, but kawaiily efficient.

Even more spectacular?
- Josh NESBIT's low tech smart(and caring)phones,
- Mikel MARON's grassroot initiatives to put marginalized communities not only on the map*** but behind and all around it (Groundtruth Initiative, Open StreetMap...). Note how, on this photo, Mikel's body language speaks volumes the above mentioned Steve will never read.





Empowering people, making a fair democracy possible, filling all kind of gaps... that's what smart networks should be all about.

mot-bile 2012 / SeoulVillage 2012
* among other nonsensical and poorly written blogules (nothing serious, it simply has to come out of my system).

** program of Day I:
Opening Ceremony and Keynote Address: WOO Wongil (Chief Executive Secretary, Seoul Digital Forum / President and CEO, SBS)
Congratulatory Remarks: LEE Kye Cheol (Chairman, Korea Communications Commission)
Keynote Address:
-"A New Era of Opportunity" - Steve BALLMER (CEO, Microsoft)
-"Technology and the Opportunities for a Better Society" - Jeong H KIM (President, Bell Labs / Chief Strategy Officer, Alcatel-Lucent)
-"The Future of IT: Learning from Coexistence Leadership"
- Warren EAST (CEO, ARM Holdings)
-"Enabling Equal Information Access to All Users" - T.V. RAMAN (Research Scientist, Google)
-"Technology, Film, and the Future" - Chris COOKSON (President, Sony Pictures Technologies)
-"Personal Cloud: The 'PC' of Tomorrow" - Mike HARRIS (Group Vice President, Gartner)
-"Shaping New Hopes in the Smart Era" - PYO Hyun-Myung (President, Mobile Business Group, KT Corporation)
-Special Address - PARK Won Soon (Mayor, Seoul Metropolitan Government)
-"Appropriate Technology: Simplicity brings hope to the digital age" - Paul POLAK (CEO, Windhorse International / Founder, International Development Enterprises - IDE), YOO Youngje (Professor, School of Chemical Engineering, Seoul National University / President, Scientists and Engineers Without Borders) - moderator CHANG Soo Y (Professor, Department of Industrial and Management Engineering, POSTECH / Codirector, Sharing and Technologies Incorporated)
-"Smart life enabled by mobile technology: an industry ecosystem will enable user experience" - BYUN Jae-woan (Head of Technology Innovation Center and CTO, SK Telecom)
-"Big Data and our future"
."The key to popular understanding of data is play" - Ben CERVENY (Founder and President, Bloom Studio / Founder, Experience Design Lab, frog design)
."Extending Humanity with technology" - Aaron KOBLIN (Creative Director, Data Arts Team, Google Creative Lab)
."Making one world through Big Data" - LEE Bong-gyou (Professor, Graduate School of Information and Director of the Communications Policy Research Center, Yonsei University)
."Interface: the window that changes the world" - CHANG Donghoon (Senior VP, Head of Design Group of Mobile Communications Division / Head of Design Strategy team at Corporate Design Center, Samsung Electronics)
-"Interface and Humanity":
."Genealogies of anxiety and wonder: our past and future with computing" - Genevieve BELL (Director, Interactions and Experience Research, Intel Labs, Intel)
."Devices, platforms, and a new way of life" - Phil LIBIN (Founder and CEO, Evernote)
.Initially scheduled: "User Interface Designed to Fix Personal Health" (Aza RASKIN)
-"Robots, games, and humor"
."The future life supported by robotic avatars" - Hiroshi ISHIGURO (Director, Intelligent Robotics Laboratory, Osaka University)
."Behavior-change Games and Habit Design" - Michael KIM (Founder and CEO, Kairos Labs)
."Research that makes people laugh, then think" - Marc ABRAHAMS (Founder, Ig Nobel Prize / Editor, Improbable Research / Columnist, The Guardian)
-"Technology, Humanity, and Collaboration":
."Expanding the reach of technology" - Josh NESBIT (CEO, Medic Mobile)
."Mapping the invisible: Open Source Mapping and Visible Communities" - Mikel MARON (President, Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team / Codirector, Ground Truth Initiative)

*** note that yesterday, Seoul Mayor PARK Won-soon also mentioned a collaborative use of the map (on trial before the monsoon season): citizens spot problems, locate and report them on the map to shorten delays and improve accuracy.

---
UPDATE 20120524 (photos) ---
UPDATE 20120525 (dang, forgot Phil's pix as well)

SK Telecom keeps Hoppin

While I was blogging about KT's cloud computing services, rival SK Telecom was presenting its own cloud computing platform to the press, N-Screen.

The idea is to make convergence as seamless as possible for the enduser and service providers : the platform automatically recognises the device and adapts the content to it, and all DRM hassles have been taken care of in advance.

There too, your handset is as more a smartphone as a smartTV enabler. It's a Samsung device, of the now well established Galaxy S family, and it's branded Galaxy S Hoppin (among other characteristics : Android 2.2, 1 GHz CPU, 4-inch Super AMOLED display...). Subventions included, it will cost you KRW 300,000.

SKT has already been advertising massively for Hoppin, with an enduser glued to the screen in every context, even asleep. Since Hoppin is also the name of their cloud computing service, they will eventually communicate about other devices (TV, PCs, tablets, fixed phones... - note that more and more models of fixed phones feature a color screen in Korea).

N-Screen is an open platform, meaning first of all that everybody is invited to join. To prove successful, that should include, beyond endusers, more than a few content providers or handset manufacturers.

Same story for Android platforms : SK Telecom boasts about its close partnership with Google in hardware and software development (GED / Google Experience Device, Samsung Galaxy, Motorola Xoom Tablet, LG Electronics G-Slate...), and it is a clear leader at the handset level (SKT sold 83% of all Android handsets in Korea and now averages 20,000 units a day), but the operator is still struggling at the BtoBtoC level, even if developers are proposed a "T Academy" to create more apps for the "T Store".

This press conference followed the announcement of a partnership with Japan's KDDI and Softbank Mobile for NFC-based mobile payment. Smart Poster will be operational in both countries and aims for the global market. Local competitors with exotic proprietary solutions, take notice :

The aim of the trial test is to establish mutual compatibility between countries using NFC as a common international standard instead of existing local Korean or Japanese mobile financial service methods. Currently in Korea, telecommunication companies provide mobile financial services such as credit cards, public transportation, stock trading and banking using a finance-enabled USIM chip called the 'Combi Card'. While Japan's finance service utilizes a self-developed method called 'Felica' by installing a second chip, apart from the USIM, within the mobile device

NTT DoCoMo, a partner of KT, must have appreciated the ironic tribute. Some may hear some bitterness in the tone : as we often mentioned earlier, SKT has somehow abandoned its cultural and innovative leadership to Korea Telecom. It reshuffled its management and pledged to develop a "young, speedy organization", to promote "openness" and "collaboration", and to regain confidence overseas.

MelOn recently made it in Indonesia, and this partnership with Japanese MNOs is really significant, but it will take more to be recognized as a major value aggregator at the international level. Let's see how the new management takes up the challenge.

mot-bile 2011

Korea Telecom signs the country's first MVNOs

A decade after other countries, Korea is discovering the charms of MVNOhood.

Korea Telecom signed 3 partnerships - a classic mix indeed :
- voice-centric Free Telecom (prepaid offers)
- data-centric EverGreen Mobile (EGMobile)
- entertainment-oriented Entaz (mobile games)

Partnerships were clinched via KTF DoCoMo Mobile and the Fast Incubation Center (FIC), the new unit in charge of stimulating the ecosystem around the company, including a Smart Open Forum.

"Open", but to a certain point : none of the first 3 MVNOs is a big name, even in its own field. Bigger fishes were kept at bay, like ONSE Telecom who, as we saw earlier, was a more than outspoken candidate. It rather looks like the perfect alibi for the regulator, and a convenient training ground for new processes and business models : wider "openings" will be requiered, and KT wants to remain competitive at the international level.

Rivals SK Telecom and LG Telecom will probably follow a similar path. I wouldn't expect from the leader a disruptive deal with a flamboyant player... unless of course the said player is a in-house spinoff in disguise (ie MelOn or another multimedia brand, and a business-centric package.


mot-bile 2010

Cisco Cius ? Put it on my Samsung Galaxy Tab

With its Android based Galaxy series, Samsung seems to have packaged a nice alternative to the iPhone / iPad duet. Or is it the whole industry that's growing tired of the Cupertino arrogance ?

Anyway, the Galaxy S is already selling very well in Korea (over 200,000 units within days) and overseas (the top 5 MNOs went for it, 100 worldwide), and NTT DoCoMo already announced the launch of Galaxy Tab in October 2010 (LG's tablet is still expected in Q4).

Meanwhile, Cisco gave a new shot at the business tablet concept : the Cisco Cius is expected H1 2011. Also based on Android, the Cius looks much smaller than the 7 Inch Galaxy Tab, and seems to focus on video calls : "HD video (720p) with Cisco TelePresence solution interoperability for lifelike video communication with the simplicity of a phone call"*... That, of course, is provided you're connected to a big pipe, say Wi-Fi for instance.

Funny how Wi-Fi coverage is getting popular again : MNOs are abandoning flat rates for data... and all hopes that LTE can support the boom in heavy mobile / nomadic usages.

Cisco also throws in EVO 4G, Bluetooth, USB, the last one a sure bet.

But I would rather bet on RIM than Cisco for a hit in business circles, even if the BlackBerry Tablet is supposed to rely on the Blackberry handset for connectivity. Actually, that major drawback for the enduser could prove an excellent argument for CIOs and CFOs.

Nevermind that geeky CEO.


mot-bile 2010

* other applications apabilities (see Cisco Cius website) :
• 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi, 3G/4G data and Bluetooth 3.0 help employees stay connected on and off-campus
• Virtual desktop client enables highly secure access to cloud-based business applications
• Android operating system, with access Android marketplace applications
• Collaboration applications including Cisco Quad, Cisco Show and Share, WebEx, Presence, and IM
Tablet Highlights:
• 7” diagonal, high-resolution color screen with contact-based touch targets delivers an elegant, intuitive experience
• HD Soundstation supports Bluetooth and USB peripherals, 10/100/1000 wired connectivity and a handset option
• Detachable and serviceable 8-hour battery for a full day of work
• Highly secure remote connections with Cisco AnyConnect Security VPN Client
• HD audio with wideband support (tablet, HD Soundstation)

TeliaSonera 4G LTE, with a little elf from my friends

mot-bile 2009 - TeliaSonera launched commercially 4G LTE in Stockholm (Ericsson network) and Oslo (Huawei network) with a Samsung 4G USB key. Roll out will continue over 2010 : the 4 biggest cities in Norway, the top 25 cities and vacation areas in Sweden.

Of course, handsets are not ready yet, and the MNO makes good use of this technical and PR stunt to draw new partners : "Evaluation of suppliers for TeliaSonera's common 4G core network and radio networks in the Nordic and Baltic countries is in progress and vendors will be selected in the beginning of 2010*"... Too late to save the face of a well known Finnish vendor called Nokia. Sonera comes from Finland and TeliaSonera was awarded a license there last month, but the group is based in Sweden and proceeded with the Chinese champion along with Ericsson.

Of course, TeliaSonera is likely to select buyers as well as vendors. And the likes of France Telecom could also feel the 4G acceleration.

This operation has been smoothly run for months, without overhyping. TeliaSonera even launched ahead of schedule. No big deal. A non-event, almost.

Far from the complex launch of 3G by NTT DoCoMo but then again, technical, commercial, and political challenges were completely different.

And back then, NTT DoCoMo was claiming the world and calling smaller fishes to join his big pond. Here, TeliaSonera is clearly calling a bigger fish : hey Santa, please hire me in your workshop ! look, been a good elf, uh ? I showed you the goods, now show me the money.


* "TeliaSonera first in the world with 4G services" (20091212)

IPTV in Korea, an update

Korea Communications Commission (KCC) is now one year old, and IPTV eventually gaining ground.

Korea's 3 IP operators totalled 595,000 IPTV subs at the end of July 2009. They're still dwarfed by cablecos (ie CJ Hello Vision boasts about 800,000 cable TV subs, C&M 700,000), but they gained 26% in one month and 58% over the past two months. And cablecos are feeling the heat as IP players plan to extend the technological wars into new territories.

As we saw earlier*, Korea's 3 IPTV players are also Korea's 3 MNOs. They cannot market VoIP as aggressively as they'd like to, nor propose as wide a choice of TV channels as cablecos, but they keep extending their TV offers, and their triple play offers are claiming new converts.

With 22% of the IPTV market, SK Broadband (SK Telecom) is still lagging behind Qook (KT/KTF, 46%) and LG Dacom (LG Telecom, 32% MS), but it led the small pack with a 35% market share for July and at such a pace, positions could very much change dramatically before the end of the year.

KT intends to remain confortably at the top, and will put more pressure on its competitors by pushing voice over WiBro.

Stuck with cdma2000 for 3G, LG Telecom is speeding up the preparation of LTE (announced for 2013), with the help of its cousin LG Electronics, who will provide NTT DoCoMo with "4G" chips as early as next year for the first LTE devices. LG Telecom can also count on Qualcomm to quicken the transition from cdma2000 to LTE.

In partnership with the National Information Society Agency (NIA), KCC recently announced "Giga Internet" service trials for 2,000 households by the end of 2012. The idea is to lift Korea Inc from the 100M "standard" to 1 Giga all the way across the value chain, with new networks, new devices, and new IPTV services (3D, multi-angle, HD Home CCTV, TV multimedia messenger...). One consortium will be led by KT (the leading "telco") and the other by CJ Hello Vision (the leading "cableco").

Concentration seems bound to accelerate. Most Korea Cable Television and Telecommunications Association (KCTA) operators are not fitted for this kind of race, and some players may be up for grabs for powerful new entrants : controversial new media laws allow press groups and conglomerates to invest in broadcasting, and not all of them may be satisfied with a partner's seat.

mot-bile 2009

* see "One stop selling", "IPTV wars and WiBro truce", "IPTV in Korea"

5 trends for 2009 ?

. more concerns about health with the rise of femtocells
. vertical concentration in the media
. more big names (Yahoo!, RIM...?) change hands, more manufacturers go bankrupt
. DoCoMo goes shopping to pave the way for an international launch of LTE - Japan Inc follows suit thanks to a strong Yen
. a 3.0 FCC chairman with a web pedigree

KT-NTT Venture Forum

Announced last May, the first KT-NTT Venture Forum took place yesterday in Palo Alto, CA.

What's in a name ? This is a forum, it features Venture issues, and is led by KT and NTT, the fixed counterparts to KTF and NTT DoCoMo, whose partnership has been already blooming for a while. The brand KT appears first in this new venture, but NTT is a much bigger player.

What's in a location ? Initially planned to host the premiere, Seoul will organize the next round this September. How "neutral" can the Sillicon Valley be ? Both NTT America, Inc. (nttamerica.com) and NTT DoCoMo USA, Inc. (docomo-usa.com) are based in NYC, while KT America's HQ are in L.A. (ktamerica.com). But Palo Alto is home to DoCoMo Communications Laboratories USA, Inc. (docomolabs-usa.com), and NTT serves customers in the US far beyond the national expat community (ie Verio).

What's in a program ? 12 start-ups showed up and off at the Four Seasons Hotel Silicon Valley. 76 avid investors (VCs, Qualcomm, Sony, Samsung, Cisco, Intel & co) attended speeches by CTOs CHOI Doo-wan and Noritaka UJI. Each operator came with staff from 15 BUs. This was obviously meant to go beyond name-card trading and to let the Sillicon Valley take notice : we may not be the new sheriff in town, but we are no small fish either. And we are willing to invest, to make new things happen.

A few days earlier, SK Telecom confirmed the sale of Helio to Virgin*. To go to Hollywood from Palo Alto, you do have to go South...

Both Korean heavyweights are intensifying the competition at home, where KT and KTF will unite and where SKT purchases his way into the home broadband market. The former PTT is becoming more customer oriented and considering bundles (broadband at home with Megapass, IPTV with MegaTV, VoIP with KT, broadband on the go with KT Wibro...).

On the mobile turf, there seems to be a cultural shift these days :

- KTF found its mojo and developped a taste for marketing entertainment**.
- SKT keeps the overall lead (50%+ market share), but seems to be losing some of its cool factor. It is lagging behind his rival in the WCDMA frenzy : 27.4% of the market have been converted at the end of June 2008 and despite a better month by SKT, KTF holds 51.1% of these 12.3M subs.

SHOW succeeded the old SKT way : massive advertising, devoted shops, an aura of fun and buzz. "T" did enjoy the same treatment but with a rather "Deutsche Telecom" flavor : somehow less fun and less buzz. Actually, this zero-affect-non-brand sounds too techno-oriented and not very sexy, while the Show brand is clearly a hit : just compare "show-time" with "T-time" and it jumps at your face.

The leader is putting all its weight on the new USIM-based solutions (that's "T" and "USIM", not a new brand) including contactless payments. The loyalty strategy lies at the core of mobility, in a tiny little fortress of technology, at the very moment the competitor is embracing a more pervasive kind of ambition.


* see "Helio lands on Virgin island" (20080509)
** ditto Voda : Vodafone Music Reporter is to rock and roll with MySpace

Windows of opportunity

Nokia merged their S40 and S60 platforms with Symbian, and their destiny with NTT DoCoMo and SonyEricsson in the open source race against Google and the Linux family. But the Symbian Foundation is not competing with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation ; it's only inviting people to stop throwing money out of the Windows, and to put Apple in the same (waste ?) basket. The aim is not to become the sexiest techno on the market, but to make sure the bulk of the value remains in familiar hands.

Which could be a moto for Qualcomm. The San Diego Chargers want to surf on ip.access' success in femtocells, and their strategy is to purchase the joint and collect the royalties. Business as usual, but will ip.access remain as popular ? Will Qualcomm succeed in closing the door to competitors or in motivating them to enter through the windows ?

Virgin Mobile USA decided to open wide both in a Totally Unlimited move : get all you can spit voice for $79.99 / mo, and add 10 bucks for a data combo. Some commuters may prefer working from home to spending a little bit less than a hundred a month for a little bit more than 20 gallons of oil.

Samsung SDI Co designs windows that generate solar power. This BIPV (Building Integrated PhotoVoltalic) technology could help Korean buildings become more energy efficient. Or Korean mobile phones to charge while catching a sun tan ? Uh. Not such a brilliant idea. My deduction is that induction will do this at a quicklier and safer pace (more "electric Wifi" demos are expected this August at the IFA / Internationale Funkausstellung in Berlin).

Hectic for hactic

Samsung released its Anycall Hactic handset : for KRW 700,000, your touchscreen gets responsive when you use it.

Good vibrations for Samsung, warmer feelings for LG : one handset is coated with silicon that feels like human skin (can you use Moto's Razr on that LG-SH240 ?), another displays interactively smart and supposedly energy saving light (the Touch Lighting Phone - KRW 600,000).

LG Electronics, along with Casio, is also providing handsets for LG Telecom's cdma2000 1x EV - DO Rev . A service - branded OZ (unlimited data download for 6,000 won per month)... a tribute to the wizard or Korea's lightweight MNO ? Good luck to them - the HSPA bandwagon is long gone in Korea.

By the way : KT teams up with another key Japanese player. After importing NTT DoCoMo's techno, they may export Korean contents through their 50/50 JV with Softbank : both players will invest KRW 20 M into contents for IPTV (90% Korean content).

Burning gates in Korea

Seoulites are crying for the loss of the city's ancient Southern Gate : Sungnyemun, also known as Namdaemun, was burned down in arson two weeks ago. The building survived the Japanese occupation as well as the 1950s War.

Korean handset manufacturers are worrying about other another monument : the protective walls around their home market. W-CDMA is blooming across the country, and Koreans are getting used to seeing a USIM card each time they manipulate their much more valuable memory cards, but there is a lock on that one.

This month, the said lock will be partially lifted and consumers will be able to change handsets as often as they want. Provided they're from the same operator, at the beginning. Which limits the second hand market to today's leaders, especially LG (Cyon) and Samsung (AnyCall). But that's a beginning. LG Telecom, stuck to CDMA, can't take the move (no USIM there).

We're still a long way from European standards, but roaming charges are eventually about to drop. With China and Japan, as a start (KTF with its partner DoCoMo). On the fixed networks too, or so I hope : I do enjoy cutting edge home networking and VOD services but what's the point of FTTH ?

SHOW time for KTF

KTF launched SHOW, its WCDMA service, last March 1st. The 1st Million mark was passed on July the 6th and 10,000 newcomers are joining every day (1,277,000 end of July 2007). "WCDMA" is now a cooler label than EV-DO in Korea. And it shows in KTF's end of July figures : during the last 3 month, its market share remained stable despite a 245k subs growth, but EV-DO subs were down (-45k). The 2-3G migration goes on (3G representing 52.8% of total, up from 47.4%) but furthermore, this confirms the CDMA migration has started, even at the 3G level (EV-DO down to 43.2% from 44.3%, WCDMA up from 3.0% to 9.6%).

Enough with boring figures. From a marketing point of view, you just need to know SHOW is the first real answer to June, SK Telecom's cool brand launched with EV-DO ages ago*.

As the name tells us, SHOW targets entertainment lovers in their 20s rather than business segments. And there is that "play" feature in the "O" of the logo. One third of subs use video telephony, especially couples. So KTF decided to launch, after the success of Movie Tariff Plan (1 free movie ticket per month included), a Movie Tariff Plans for Couples. And while they were at it another one for SMS addicts.

International Roaming (traditionaly restricted to the 2-3G CDMA world before) was another major sales pitch, and KTF announces more developments with partners DoCoMo / Conexus Mobile Alliance and Microsoft. Non-handset devices with USB connectivity are mentioned.

I guess it's time for KTF to propose something more relevant for business targets.

http://www.show.co.kr/ / http://www.conexusmobile.com/

* note that, unlike KTF, SKT declares no specific plan for migration to WCDMA. But the mobile leader is obviously and at last preparing triple play solutions with cablecos and fixed broadband players. As usual with a content flavor ("cable TV programs" are mentioned).

Super 3G trials

NTT DoCoMo announces the end of Super 3G / LTE development in 2009, starting these days with an indoor trial at 300 Mbps downlink between two gizmos. You don't want to stay in that room unless you need a perm. DoC also created CXD NEXT, a 40/60 JV with Casio Computer mating cash registers with mobile devices. iD, FeliCa, ToruCa, and others are rumored to attend the wedding as key witnesses.

RIM announces the BlackBerry 8820, a dual mode 2GSM / WiFi smartphone. SMART enough to switch from one network to the other during a PHONE call. You wouldn't want to use WiFi for secured data sessions, would you ?

Orange UK and PC World announce the "free" laptop for £ 337 (£ 14.99 per month for 24 months, except the first 3 for half the price - and you get a 2MB connection with a monthly limit of 2 GB). You may prefer their £ 300 subsidy on a few other references, or another provider with a better and cheaper free package.

Informa informs us : 6.2% of all W-CDMA subs were HSPA at the end of Q1 2007 and 20.5% will be by EOY 2008. Oh BOY.

106.8% penetration rate for broadband

106.8% for Seoul, 99.2% for Incheon, 100.7% for Gyeonggi province... as of May 2007, 90% of Korean households had a fixed broadband connection, Jeollanam-do being the usual local laggard with a 58.4% penetration rate most G8 countries would dream of posting.

Mobility is also behind with 87.3%. Despite a nationwide HSDPA coverage, 3G remains an EVDO thing for SK Telecom (55% of total subs). With the technical help of DoCoMo, KTF reached the 1st million mark for HSDPA (about 10% of their total customer base + 42% for EVDO) and expect 2.7M for EOY 2007.

IPTV remains relatively low, but more than 500,000 households have already subscribed to HanaTV (Hanaro's VOD service), and after the recent opening by the regulator, KT can at last target 300,000 subs EOY for MegaTV (1M for EOY 2008). Mobile leader SKT is out of that race and tries to enter the PC to mobile communications business. For them, international activities and payment solutions appear once more as one of the few remaining drivers for growth.

NB : this photo "Wireless Korea" (2003) is available on SnapVillage.com as "power lines".

Bouygues not for sale ? How about TF1 ?

France's new president makes no secret of his friendship with Martin Bouygues, Arnaud Lagardere, Serge Dassault or Vincent Bollore, major players in France's industrial and communications landscape.
As soon as Sarko got elected, L'Expansion revived rumors of a takeover of Areva and its nuclear gems by Bouygues, and the eventuality of the sale of Bouygues Telecom for EUR 8+ bns. Sarko loves Amerika but AT&T may have other fish to fry than a small spot in the middle of a saturated Europe. Deutsche Telecom just sold its ISP in France (Club Internet), but KPN (a fellow DoCoMo partner) confirmed its interest. And Telefonica has been expecting some reciprocity since Orange entered its home market. Even Vodafone could prefer 100% of France's #3 to 44% of #2 SFR....
Whatever. Bouygues doesn't seem as focused on communication as it used to. Lately, the group lost TPS to Canal+, the battle for TNT / DTV's best slots, part of its soccer rights to France Television, plus his Darth Vaderish leader Patrick Le Lay is about to be replaced by Nonce Paolini, a man who was deliberately sidelined during the elections nights, these key moments when medias meet with all politicians...
Beyond Bouygtel, the sale of TF1 would be a major hearthquake.
Vincent Bollore hates Bouygues and provided the private jet and yacht to Sarkozy for his Malta honeymoon with France. Silvio Berlusconi loves Nicolas Sarkozy and has unfinished business with France. He would be delighted to help Bouygues refocus on its core industrial activities. Bouygues Telecom could be sold once the question of the 4th 3G license is closed, opening a new era of partnerships at the wireless as well as the landline level (Free Iliad ?).

Pay-Buy Mobile - DoCoMo inside

KTF will pioneer GSMA's "Pay-Buy Mobile" initiative in Korea this summer, a couple of weeks after SK Telecom's launch of a service with Visa International (30,000 3G subscribers from April on).

PBM combines NFC (which should please Nokia) with SIM/Cards techno (which should please operators), and the initial casting of 14 operators from 3 continents looks strong : overall, AT&T; China Mobile; KALL; KTF; MCI; MTN; NTT DoCoMo; Rogers Wireless; Smart Communications; Telenor, TeliaSonera; Telecom Italia; Turkcell, and Vimpelcom claim 900 millions subs.

Yet, don't look for a SK Telecom, a Orange, a Telefonica or a Vodafone out there. The Sympay syndrom ? The fear NTT DoCoMo might steal the show and try to make PBM converge with its own initiatives (FeliCa and EDY through BitWallet) ?

Don't look for a bank either. At this stage.

What I do see though, is a transcontinental initiative with a GSMA label. And only a crosscontinental move could force a change in Europe, GSMA's birthplace. Up to now, a lobbying deadlock has been preventing operators and financial institutions from reaching an agreement and m-payment from progressing towards standardization. No-one wants to lose ground on one's home turf (mobility, financial services), and no-one wants a competitor to succeed (ie banks blocking deals between cellcos and more reactive players like Visa or Amex).

Should this G14 federate a few institutions across - say - Asia and North America, things may change. No financial institution will want to lose the face on that one for too long.

DoCoMo did put a few coins in AT&T and KTF. An expensive dime at a not always relevant time. We are about to know if they were just playing with one-armed bandits or really expecting some payback.

LiMo - stretching Linux Mobile

Launched mid-June 2006 and operational since January, LiMo, the Linux for Mobile Foundation, happens to be a non-for-profit initiative launched by notorious philanthropists : Motorola, NEC, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic Mobile Communications, Samsung Electronics, and Vodafone all have in common the envy to reshape the mobile internet paradygm beyond the old Nokia-Microsoft rift.

The Foundation Platform, "a Linux-based, open mobile communication device software platform", also reaches beyond Nokia's Open Mobile Architecture (OMA). Opening is definitely in the air : Orange changed its moto for a sober Orange open, and even Redmond has its Microsoft Open License (hey, that's Microsoft, there's to be a license with it).
But true opening has a cost : the ODP / DMOZ recently hiccuped after troubles with its generous patron Sun / AOL, and Wikipedia desperately needs cash to survive because of its growing success. So let's not spit on the hand that feeds the ecosystem - provided the ecosystem remains clean.

Anyway, Linux over mobile is good news for consumers, operators and manufacturers who focus on hardware. Cellcos decide to remain involved in their own future : they let 3G to Nokia, Ericsson and Qualcomm who didn't do the best of jobs, they don't want to miss the next steps at the OS as well as at the network level (ie LTE).

* limofoundation.org - soon to lose its fully open DNA : the homepage's title reads "LiMo Foundation: Welcome" but if you google the foundation, it still appears as "SourceForge: Welcome".

DoCoMo beyond DoCoMo

DoCoMo will soon expand its HSDPA coverage beyond Tokyo in Japan's major cities. 33,000 FOMA HIGH-SPEED handsets were sold during the first month of operation last summer and the MOVA / FOMA ratio fell from 54% to 45% between end of March and end of August 2006.
NTT DoCoMo's overall marketshare keeps going down too, but at a much slower pace (not even one point over the last two years). Churn rate even flirted with the 0.60% line lately. But MNP should boost it back up to 0.85%. And Softbank Mobile starts releasing impressive series of 3G W-CDMA handsets.
i-mode still suffers at the global level and e-Wallet / m-payment services seem to be the only promising driver right now : end of August, DCMX claimed 800,000 users (the service was launched in April) and Felica almost one third of DoC's 47.1M customers (15.5M enabled handsets). Besides, iD will share a common platform (PoS reader / writer, data center) with JR East's Suica next January and others will follow soon afterwards (JCB Co.'s QUICPay and bitWallet Inc.'s Edy). But nothing really new under the sun : JR East and DoCoMo have been working on it for over a year*.
Well... "DoCoMo Vision 2010" is getting older and it starts showing. Multimedia and Ubiquity didn't bring any major disruption, and Globalization looks gloomy. In Europe at least. Teaming up with KTF was the smartest move in the past few years.

* see "Zero noodle. Korea goes South" (20050730)