[A view of the state of telecomm in Korea from cdma 1X EV-DO to wireless LANs.]

by Yang Sung-jin -- "Despite the economic downturn both at home and abroad, Korea's telecom service industry has witnessed respectable growth in various ways in the year 2001.

"Thanks to the continued popularity of mobile phone services, Internet access and Internet telephony, the market is likely to reach about 30 trillion won in terms of revenue this year, analysts said yesterday.

"The number of mobile phone subscribers surpassed that of fixed-line networks in 1999 and the combined revenue of mobile carriers also outpaced that of fixed-line operators in 2000.

"ADSL (asymmetric digital subscriber line), a popular format for Korean high-speed Internet service providers, is also spurring the growth of the broadband market and wireless Internet services, jacking up data traffic dramatically.

"The surge in demand for wireless data services is in step with global predictions that the number of wireless Internet service users will match that of fixed-line service subscribers in 2005 worldwide.

"Meantime, the cdma2000 1x service is finally taking off, according to data released by the Ministry of Information and Communication said. Currently, Korea's three major wireless carriers are offering cdma2000 1x, the so-called 2.5 generation service armed with a data transmission speed of up to 144Kbps.

"The ministry said the number of cdma2000 1x users reached 3.49 million as of the end of November this year, recording a faster-than-expected growth since its formal debut in October last year.

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