If you want a taste of the much anticipated arrival of third-generation mobile phones, look not to Japan, but Korea, which has a one-year jump on its neighbor in offering the latest phones capable of swapping video and data.

The mobile future works, judging from the nearly 1.2 million South Korean consumers chatting and swapping pictures on phones that use an alternative to the technology which NTT DoCoMo, the fast-growing mobile sensation, plans to offer next week in Japan.

High-tech theologians may debate whether South Korea's new services are ``true 3G'' since they are based on a different technology to the one which more than 100 countries are gearing up to use around the globe, but customers see no difference.

On a Seoul subway, it's common to see teenaged girls and young women kill time by playing games, downloading pictures and exchanging messages using flashy colour-screen mobile phones.

The appeal stretches to new picture phone features that allow friends to watch each other as they gossip.

``I spend about 30 minutes a day using my mobile phone to play games,'' said Kyong Jin-a, 23, who belongs to a group selected by KTF , one of Korea's three mobile carriers, to study the novel ways consumers are using the new phones.

``Personally, I like to download digital photos onto my screen, which takes one minute to one and a half minutes. That's pretty fast, I think,'' she said, referring to snapshots she has taken of her daily life.

The graphic features go well beyond the voice and text messaging of Kyong's old phone. She used to swap about 100 short messages a month with her friends, but now can share photos.

Her service provider, KTF, is Korea's second largest mobile operator. It began cdma2000 1x services in major cities in July.

All three South Korean carriers now offer the new services, nicknamed ``1x''.

SK Telecom , the market leader with half of South Korea's almost 28 million mobile subscribers, has converted nearly one million, or seven percent, of those subscribers to the upgraded system since it started its 1x service in October.

1x was developed by Qualcomm of the U.S. and is a 3G technology that allows graphics or digital music to be grabbed off the Internet.

The technology boasts CD-quality sound and data transmission at a top rate of 144 Kilobits per second, according to the International Telecommunications Union.

"We're using Korea as a test case for new services in Europe,'' he said. "There is a possibility that network operators might settle for using 1x and postpone an upgrade to pure 3G technology."

While consumers elsewhere may wait years to see such services -- the United States, for example, has not even scheduled the airwave auctions necessary to build the higher capacity networks -- mobile operators are counting on Korea and Japan to justify the huge investments they are making in such multimedia networks.

Still, despite the much-hyped high speeds that 1x offers, Korean mobile carriers admit that data transmission is in reality slower than the promised 144 Kbps. "Actually, the speed is around 60 to 80Kbps, depending on how many users are trying to get on the system,'' said Lim Byeong-yong, vice president of corporate strategy team at LG Telecom. LG, the smallest of Korea's three mobile carriers, began its 1x service in May.

NTT DoCoMo has had to live with lowered expectations of its own after software glitches and a shortage of new phones capable of handling faster data rates forced the Japanese carrier to delay the introduction of its 3G services to October 1 from last May.

Youth Market Proves Biggest Audience
LG's Lim said the biggest market for its latest phones is young subscribers in their teens and twenties, who account for fully 50 percent of its CDMA 1x RTT users.

"A 30-year-old user may be our client for 30 years or 40 years from now. But teenagers and young people are potential subscribers for 60 years or more,'' he said. "So our marketing, naturally, is focused on younger generations.''

LG, which won a 3G license in August, 2001 said that it would move on to an advanced service based on Qualcomm's technology to offer more sophisticated applications, including streaming video, at a rate of several megabits per second.

"We plan to launch a genuine 3G service in the second half of next year or early 2003 at the latest,'' said Lim.

SK Telecom and KFT, which won 3G licences last December, also plan to offer enhanced services using W-CDMA technology, favoured by DoCoMo and Finland's Nokia , late next year or in 2003.

Source of this news item : Reuters

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