Talking face to face, far away

If you’ve needed an excuse to buy a new phone, now you’ve got one, provided that you have some extra cash lying around: SK Telecom and KTF said yesterday that they will begin offering video phone services in Korea within a couple of months. Although mobile phones have been able to handle video for some time, the service was not available on a commercial basis from mobile phone service providers. Internationally, the service is available only in Hong Kong and certain parts of Europe. “We conducted test services for one year to stabilize the use of WCDMA phones and didn’t find any problems,” an official at the Ministry of Information and Communications said. “Korean companies such as LG Electronics have been exporting WCDMA phones for some time, but this is the first time we’re introducing them to the Korean market.” SK Telecom will begin providing the service in Seoul next month and expand it to the metropolitan area and six other cities by next year. KTF will begin offering the service in Seoul and some surrounding districts in January, expanding it to major cities by 2006. The video service is based on WCDMA, or wideband code division multiple access. Since most current phones are based on the CDMA standard, or code division multiple access, many customers wanting video will have to buy new phones. These phones have all the functions of regular phones, but they will also have automatic roaming features that enable users to make phone calls outside Korea. The handsets are in the 1 million won ($906) range, but the government will let telecom carriers subsidize some of the costs, which will bring the price down to about 600,000 won, about the same price of current high-end mobile phones that have digital cameras. Using video features during phone calls won’t be cheap, either. For KTF subscribers, regular phone calls will cost 18 won for every 10 seconds, but video phone calls will cost 100 won for every 10 seconds. SK Telecom said it hasn’t decided on the cost of video phone calls. Addressing worries that the video service will infringe upon privacy, the telecom companies say the recipient of the call does not have to respond in video. “Even if someone sends you a call through live video, you can just answer in voice,” an SK Telecom official said. “The advantages of video are that couples can look at each other while talking and in the case of emergencies, one can show the scene of the accident.” by Wohn Dong-hee