Korean Carriers Swarm VoIP

Korean carriers are pushing VoIP in a big way, despite some regulatory challenges carriers want to have fixed.

Hanarotelecom, Korea's second largest fixed line phone and broadband internet provider, is scheduled to start aggressively promoting VoIP on Friday when it emerges from a 40 day "business suspension" for unlawful marketing activities.  

The Korean government is expected to adopt number portability for VoIP as early as next month, a move that would benefit Hanarotelecom and others as telephony subscribers switch to cheaper VoIP services; currently, VoIP service requires a new phone number.  Not helping matters is the 070 prefix used by VoIP numbers--a prefix typically associated with telemarketing pitches.

Hanarotelecom expects to gain a win with a "quadruple play" bundling its fixed line, broadband, IPTV, and VoIP offerings with SK telecom's mobile phone service, tapping into SK's 22 million customers.

LG Dacom, controlling only 1.1 percent of the fixed line market, has also seen VoIP success, bringing in more than 800,000 customers for its "myLG070" VoIP service, a 10 times increase from last year's numbers.

Analysts believe VoIP offerings will make a big difference in the competition between leased line services, with IDC Korea forecasting an annual growth of about 53 percent for the next five years.

KT, which owns more than 90 percent of the Korean fixed-line market, is worried that VoIP will cannibalize its customer pool; sales are already starting to decline in 2008.

For more:
- Korea Times reports showdown on Internet telephony

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