By Kim Tong-hyung
Staff reporter
WiBro, a Korean portable Internet standard, has been faltering at home, but officials are desperate to prove that it can carve a niche in developing nations with weak telecommunications infrastructures.
Choi See-joong, chairman of the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), the country's information-technology (IT) policy body, was meeting government officials in Egypt Tuesday (KST) to discuss the possibilities of Korean companies having a bigger involvement in the North African nation's emerging technology markets.
The meeting in Cairo was highlighted by the signing of a memorandum of understanding (MOU) aimed at improving cooperation between the two countries in advanced technology areas such as high-speed wireless Internet, mobile television and Web-enabled television services such as interactive Internet protocol television (IPTV).
However, WiBro was clearly the most focal point of the talks, KCC officials said, with Egyptian policymakers expressing interest in potential joint projects between Korean and local firms to establish the wireless networks.
For countries like Egypt, which lacks a strong fixed telecommunications infrastructure, sophisticated wireless technologies like WiBro could be effective in broadening Internet coverage, by plugging the gaps left by DSL and cable, and helping reduce the communications gaps between developed and rural areas.
In his meeting with Egyptian Social Solidarity Minister Ali Moselhi, Choi suggested Egypt to quicken its licensing for the 2.5 gigahertz broadband wireless spectrum, which is to be used by next-generation communications technologies like WiBro, and also put its planed mobile television trial services on the fast track. Currently, Egypt provides only limited wireless broadband coverage at some of its major tourist destinations.
``Choi was trying to convince Egyptian policymakers that WiBro is an ideal technology to effectively connect areas where it's hard to install fixed-line networks,'' said an official from the KCC's international cooperation division.
``Egypt is committed to foster converged broadcasting and telecommunications technologies as its new growth engines. The cohesion between Korean and Egyptian firms will also help them exploit new business opportunities in the African and European regions.''
WiBro, short for ``wireless broadband,'' is the local variant of mobile WiMAX, which is competing with Long Term Evolution (LTE) in the standard wars for fourth-generation (4G) communications. As with other 4G candidate technologies, WiBro promises fully mobile broadband access and had been touted to eventually beat both Wi-Fi and third-generation (3G) cellular networks.
Technology giant Samsung Electronics and KT, the country's biggest Internet provider and runner-up mobile-phone carrier, are among the major WiBro backers.
In developing its own mobile WiMAX deviation in WiBro, the Korean government had aimed to drive the standard and allow local companies to benefit from homegrown intellectual property.
However, four years into its commercial services, which that started in 2006, WiBro has yet to live up to its hype in Korea, where the number of subscribers has yet to reach half a million, making a mockery of initial government predictions of passing the 1 million mark by 2008.
KT has around 300,000 WiBro subscribers, while SK Telecom, the leading wireless operator, has little more than 30,000.