By Cho Mu-hyun
Who’s first?
LG Uplus, the smallest of three carriers, Tuesday was the first to announce plans to launch the world’s first VoLTE or Voice over Long Term Evolution service.
SK Telecom was caught off guard and within hours made its own announcement to introduce the same service.
On Wednesday, both firms announced their “first ever subscribers.”
First of all, it turned out both were wrong about being the world’s first launchers of the service. It was an American mobile carrier Metro PCS who announced and launched theirs on Aug. 7, who won by the time difference between there and Korea.
“What happened was pure comedy. I mean this is when marketing war crosses the border of what is reasonable to become ridiculous,” said an industry official who declined to be named. “Especially SK Telecom, as the leader in the telecommunication industry, could have shown a more responsible and appropriate attitude in line with its position in the market.”
Then another thing about VoLTE is that it needs handsets with the proper software installed to support it. Just because the carriers are all prepared, it doesn’t mean a thing if the manufacturers don’t have their equipment ready to support it. And they weren’t.
Samsung and LG Electronics stated Wednesday that they rolled out smartphones, Galaxy 3S and Optimus LTE 2, respectively, with preinstalled software ready to support the service.
But only a few retailers owned by SK Telecom in the metropolitan area actually had the handsets ready for sale. Only a few places actually started selling the phones and the firmware upgrades for handsets already in use were ongoing despite the “nation-wide VoLTE” slogan.
“The shipping of this magnitude can’t happen right away, and we are moving the handsets as quickly as possible,” said an SK spokesman. “A firmware upgrade is also ongoing, and we will try to finish it by August as well.”
“We were in continuous talks with carriers concerning VoLTE and we have already shipped them in the appropriate amount that they have requested. Putting it on display to be sold is their responsibility,” said a spokesman of an equipment manufacturer.
Park Jae-woo, an officer worker who lives in Seoul, said the retailer near his home in northern Seoul didn’t have a smartphone that supported VoLTE on Thursday. “My expiration date is nearing so I went in to try out this new service and see if the call quality was really as good as they say. But the retailer I went to said they didn’t have it.”
The biggest issue was however that there were illegal aspects about the launch. All new services by carriers must be reported to the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the nation’s telecom regulator, and be approved. The carriers had done this for VoLTE and the KCC sent a warning to the companies.
“It’s apparent that they lacked in technological preparation (to launch VoLTE services). We will closely monitor their readiness,” said KCC Chairman Lee Kye-cheol.
A recent study released by the government agency comes to mind that showed how complaints over irregular or poor call services had jumped 57 percent from a year ago.
Perhaps, instead of worrying about what the competitor is doing, telecommunication companies should look at what their customers want and serve them. This is especially true for LTE which the firms can’t release enough data of how many more subscribers they had acquired.