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South Korea launches world‘s first broadcast to mobile phone service
By Ahn Mi-Young, dpa

Seoul (dpa) - South Koreans have began to see digital TV content
on their mobile phones, with the world‘s first commercial launch of
digital broadcast on hand-held phones Sunday.

TU Media Corp., a unit of the country‘s largest mobile carrier SK Telecom, launched the satellite-based digital multimedia broadcasting (S-DMB) service that initially makes seven TV channels and 12 audio channels available for mobile handsets.

Some of the early subscribers, who snapped up digital camera phones and MP3 phones, may opt to buy a "hybrid DMB-cellphone" by Samsung Electronics (SCH-B100) or SK Teletech IMB-1000).

The hybrid mobile phone is used as an S-DMB phone and sells for some 850,000 won (850 U.S. dollars). There are already 23,000 users of these hybrid mobile phones who participated in a pilot S-DMB test run that began in January, according to Hur Jae-Young, spokesman for TU Media.

The new service is expected to ignite a new rush in the country‘s saturated mobile phone market that peaked at 37 million subscribers.

S-DMB is set to be promoted by SK Telecom as the next "killer application." Other smaller carriers such as KTF and LG Telecom are in negotiations with TU Media to sign a re-sellership contract to sell the hybrid phones that can receive satellite signals.

TU Media is aiming for 600,000 S-DMB phone users by the end of the year, but squares up against the country‘s terrestrial TV broadcasters - KBS, MBC and SBS - who are licensed to launch terrestrial-DMB (T-DMB) in June.

S-DMB is nationwide and charges a monthly flat rate of 13 U.S.-dollars for 39 channels later, while T-DMB is free of charge with its service for Seoul and the metropolitan areas.

It has been said that the winner will be the one who can provide better programming and offer DMB devices that are affordable as well.

However, TU Media CEO Seo Young-kil said in a press conference
that it will not offer subsidies for customers to buy S-DMB phones.

TU Media must entice terrestrial TV broadcasters to deliver TV content into S-DMB phones, but faces a stiff opposition from the unionists of broadcasters who try to block their digital TV content to mobile.

Observers say that TV broadcasters do not want a newcomer like TU Media that they fear could grow and eventually erode their market position.

TV broadcasters take a lion‘s share of the advertising market, so
they have little reason to cheer about a newcomer like TU Media," said Kim Sung-Hoon, an analyst at Daewoo Securities.

South Korea has lobbied to have the T-DMB standard adopted for Europe instead of DVB-H that has been championed by Nokia.

S-DMB and T-DMB will be the most advanced networks for the next few years, according to London-based Informa Telecoms & Media. There will be a total of 124.8 million broadcast mobile TV users worldwide by 2010, the firm expects.