KT sets test run of WiBro service

KT Corp., Korea’s largest fixed-line telecommunications company, will start its commercial service of new wireless broadband technology next year with the aim of attracting as many as 4 million subscribers to the service by 2010, a company executive said yesterday. “We will be able to introduce the commercial WiBro service in June 2006 in the Seoul area,” Hong Won-pyo, senior vice president of KT’s mobile Internet business group, said in an interview on the sidelines of the APEC gathering in Busan. The WiBro technology is designed to deliver high-speed Internet connections to mobile phones, allowing people to watch high-definition television programs via handsets in a moving vehicle or on a street. A test run of the world’s first wireless broadband Internet service by KT is now underway in Busan with a limited roll-out using 500 handsets during the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.