'We are looking for a partner for our broadband network in India'

You are planning to enter the Indian market. What key difference do you
think you'll bring?

The only difference between any Indian operator and us is that we have a
very strong application-engineering and development-engineering center. We are a
$19 bn company, in which $12 bn is contributed by the Korean business and the
rest comes from other countries like Russia, CIS, and China. In India, we have
not done any major projects, but we are doing some sort of consultancy work. We
did the planning for Reliance Radio. We are present in Bangladesh, China, and
have done some e-Governance projects in Nepal. Now, we are setting up wireless
broadband projects in some CIS countries.

What are your plans for India?

Our main objective is to look for an investment partner in India for our
broadband network. The mobile market is already choked, so we don't want to add
another player. We are looking for a partner who already has a license. We had a
lot of due diligence done some two years back. We made efforts for the
acquisition of Tata Teleservices, but that did not materialize. Subsequently, we
had Shyam Telecom and Sify in mind, however, even that did not happen. We then
decided to go it alone, but in that process, mobile services went out of our
hands.

At this moment, we are looking for serious partners for broadband and WiMax.
We don't mind spending $300-400 mn for this initiative. As a result of the
relaxation in FDI norms, we can own up to 76% in a company. So, we are looking
for a joint venture partner.

SP Jerath, president, Operations, India and SAARC, Korea Telecom

What will be your business model for WiMax rollout?

Since KT is a market leader in the broadband sector, we want to bring that
expertise of management and operations to India. Therefore, we are not looking
at strategic investment. We are looking at management participation and
management control, so that we can run the operations and use the KT expertise.
We are in talks with certain people and are likely to freeze a deal soon. In
India, we are also looking at developing broadband infrastructure for
real-estate developers. We have the expertise in wired, wireless, and PSTN; as a
result, we can help developers in building broadband-ready real estate.

What service improvements are you planning to bring to the Indian
consumer?

In Korea, along with providing the broadband service, we are also developing
content like online gaming, video gaming, pictures, etc. In India, we started
with 64 kbps and moved on to 256 kbps, and now we are talking of 2 mbps, whereas
in Korea, we have 10 mbps to 35mbps right from the start. And, the current
culture is of 100% FTTH. So, the drawback of copper of not being able to scale
up the bandwidth is not present there. Today, people require huge bandwidth for
applications like IPTV. Nowadays, people have two or more TV sets at home, and
the normal connection cannot really provide service to all of them. The home
networking concept is picking up in Korea. Sitting at your office, you can
switch on your cooker or any other appliance. These kinds of services are what
we want to provide.

Since going through the copper route is very difficult, wireless is the way
out. Therefore, our objective is to start with wireless broadband in higher-end
technology and then move onto wired and WiMax kinds of technologies. WiBro is
our patented technology and we will bring in similar technologies into India.
However, a problem that we face is that in Korea we are operating at 2.3 Ghz,
whereas in India, we are not allowed this spectrum. Therefore, we will have to
modify our technology to suit Indian scenario.

Nilabh Jha

nilabhj@cybermedia.co.in