Acceleration of take-up of WCDMA

KTF, the No.1 WCDMA operator in Korea, announced that the number of WCDMA subscribers reached over 1 million as of July 6, 2007.  This translates that the number of WCDMA subscribers has doubled in just 51 days since after reaching of 0.5 million subscribers on May 16 – a rate of 10 thousand new SHOW subscribers a day.

Take-up of WCDMA accelerates with faster pace of increase of SHOW subscribers
The SHOW has garnered explosive popularity since KTF’s launching of the world-first nation-wide (99% population) commercial HSDPA service on March 1 earlier this year.  The subscription base quickly rose from 100 thousand (March 23) to 500 thousand (May 16) to 1 million (1,007,756 subscribers as of July 6) in about 4 months.  The pace of subscriber growth has gradually increased as KTF is adding about 100 thousands subscribers in 10 days whereas it took 14 days until the 500 thousand subscriber point.  The growth of SHOW generates a keen interest from the industry as it broke the major milestone of 1 million subscribers which would signify the SHOW as becoming the mass market service.

From one million SHOW subscribers;

• 54.5% are male and 45.5% are female (2G: 53.8% male and 46.2% female)
  
• 20’s take up 23.2%, 30’s 22.2% and 10’s 19.6% - more younger generation customers than in 2G (30’s: 23.6% > 40’s: 21.1% > 20’s: 18.8%)

Foundation for quality growth with rise in the high ARPU subscribers compared to 2G
An analysis of customer usage behavior pattern confirmed higher traffic activity with the SHOW subscribers compared to 2G subscribers, an indication of a positive signal for market acceptance of WCDMA and increased revenue growth potential for KTF.

The ARPU of SHOW subscribers is at KRW 43,019, about 11.3% (KRW 4,354) higher than that of 2G subscribers’ at KRW 38,665.  It is more than original expectation considering that the average annual ARPU growth rate is around 1~2%.

The outgoing MOU (Minutes Of Usage) of SHOW subscribers recorded at 213 minutes, 23.2 % (40 minutes) more than that of 2G subscribers. It is a considerable growth in MOU, considering that the figure only counts minute of use in voice communications, excluding video telephony.

The POU (Packets Of Usage) of SHOW subscribers were about nine times more than 2G subscribers while the active SHOW mobile internet users increased by 5.3%, proving the higher and differentiated value that SHOW HSDPA service delivers.

Meanwhile, 35.6% of SHOW subscribers enjoy video telephony and the percentage continues to grow.  They use more video calls in the evening while no considerable differences were found in the number of video calls made across all ages, except for people in 20’s, which translates that there are more video calls between family members or couple.

Global roaming service is one of the key SHOW services and has demonstrated explosive growth.  With SHOW, the automatic roaming is now available in 118 countries (39 WCDMA and 113 GSM), increasing the revenue by 165% and the number of roaming service users by a whopping 225%.

The qualitative and quantitative growth of the KTF SHOW service aligns with the recent report on consumer perception of WCDMA.  According to the research report on the survey of 1,135 mobile phone users, conducted by Hankook Research in June 2007, in terms of awareness about 60% knows what WCDMA is while 40% has the intention of subscribing to WCDMA, an increase of 70% from the last year’s 23%.  Moreover, they said that they will choose WCDMA because of video telephony (29%), new and differentiated services (21%) and because many seem to use it (19%).  It now appears that people recognizes WCDMA as a major trend.

Solidifying the leadership position in the 3G market by providing continuous customer benefits and enhanced services
KTF is planning to strengthen the SHOW service by providing differentiated services and enhanced customer benefit program as the severe competition in the 3G market is expected for price and handsets in the second half of 2007.

• KTF introduces variety of tariff package plans in affiliation with various partners for offering discounts and special features.  For example, a movie tariff plan which provides one free movie ticket per month is very popular among 20’s who are the core target of the SHOW.  KTF will introduce two more movie tariff plans that is Movie Tariff Plan for Couples and Movie Tariff Plan for Heavy SMS Users.


• KTF increases the benefits of the handicapped people by providing a free video telephony service with reduced monthly access charge and offering a free location search service that will constantly send the location information of the handicapped people to their guardians.


• KTF offers differentiated enhanced video VAS (Value Added Services) which includes video mail, video phone album, real-time video traffic information, widget services called “pop-up mini” and CDS (Contents Delivery Service) like “SHOW-cast” leveraging the high speed data network.


• KTF offers more than 20 different exclusive models of high-tech SHOW handsets including smart phones, touch screen phones, terrestrial DMB phones and UCC-phones.


• KTF strengthens its competitiveness with strategic alliance with global market leaders: a joint development of 3G terminals (USB modem-type) with NTT DoCoMo in Japan, seamless and valued-added global roaming service as a member of Conexus Mobile Alliance, and cooperation projects with Microsoft in the U.S.

In celebration of ONE MILLION SHOW subscribers, KTF is raising various promotions such as “Invitations for global roaming experiences in 110 countries”, “SHOW ladies festival” in affiliation with cultural centers at major department stores and “Grand preview of the movie ‘D-WAR’”

Young-Chu Cho, CEO of KTF, said “As the Million Seller depicts, the SHOW service led by KTF signifies that 3G service is now on track to become a mass market service with the passing of one million SHOW subscribers.”  He added that “The SHOW will trigger the innovative changes in customer’s life and will act as the catalyst for acceleration in development of WCDMA market and related industries.”

Meanwhile, the lucky ONE MILLIONTH SHOW Subscriber was Ms. Seung-Mi LIM from Incheon. KTF has presented her with a call voucher in the amount of KRW 3,000,000 (USD 3,260) equivalent to ONE MILLION SECONDS of video call, the top-of-the-line handset and 100,000 SHOW mileage points.