SK Telecom and China Unicom Joint Wireless Venture

26th April , 2004

ASIA : UNISK, a joint venture company formed by SK Telecom and China Unicom, has been officially launched in China. A 'board-hanging ceremony' took place on April 8th, at 2 pm in Beijing. The two CEO's of the two companies participated in the ceremony.

UNISK is China's first joint venture telecom service provider that operates with both foreign and national companies. Shang Bing, president of UNISK, invited about one hundred Korean and Chinese government officials and journalists to attend. He explained to them, UNISK's marketing plan to secure wireless Internet service subscribers in China.

Prior to its official launch, UNISK acquired a wireless Internet portal service license from the Chinese government on February 6th, 2004. The company launched a pilot service on March 13th, and introduced the commercial wireless Internet portal service, starting on the 1st of March. One month after the service launch, UNISK had obtained about 40 thousand subscribers for the monthly flat rate. This has made a great impression on China Unicom's CDMA cellular service subscribers.

The UNISK wireless Internet portal service is offering approximately 2,700 types of content, in five categories, in China. These five categories are Picture, Bell Sound, Games, Chatting, and Horoscope. All of these have been very successful in Korea. The company plans to extend its content offering to 10,000 types, before the end of this year.

UNISK is providing service in a cooperative effort between ten Korean wireless Internet solution developers and content providers, such as Neomtel, Danal, Mobile-on, Cynet, Yaho, Mdata, Widerthan.Com, and U-angel, among others. The company has a plan to expand its strategic alliance with Chinese venture companies as well as Korean companies, and develop this portal into a cyber space that reflects Korean, Chinese, and Japanese cultures.

At the same time, in order to become a leader in the Chinese wireless Internet market under the brand name of "U Jok-Bu-Rak", the company will focus on launching differentiated value-added services by the first half of this year. These include "Coloring" service and "Mosquito-Off" service, which have enjoyed great popularity in Korea.

UNISK has been strengthening its marketing and promotion activities such as banner advertisements in China's three major wired portal sites (SINA, SOHU, and Netease). This is an attempt to secure a market leadership position in the Chinese wireless Internet market that is in a rapidly moving growth stage.

SK Telecom and China Unicom established UNISK in Beijing of China on February 6, 2004. This joint venture company was capitalized at six million US dollars. SK Telecom owns 49% of the joint venture company's equity share, and China Unicom has a 51% share.

There are over 300 million cellular users in the China's telecom market, making it the largest in the world. A variety of multimedia-based wireless Internet services are being developed in this market. This goes far beyond simple cellular usage patterns based on voice and short message exchange. As a result, the number of wireless Internet users is expected to reach 10 million by the end of 2004.

Sung Chul Hong, vice-president and head of SK Telecom's Global Business Division commented, "We will continue to implement global businesses to secure new growth engines. Mindful of this initiative, SK Telecom set the goal of becoming a major world's information communication company that has global competitiveness in the free economy markets of East Asia". "The initial deployment of this strategy is occurring in China. Based on our core competence accumulated in the existing business arena, and after exploiting the Asian market, we plan to constantly expand our business area to the entire global market. This includes the U.S., and Europe" he added.

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