South Korea could get a fourth mobile operator after a new consortium applied to the regulator for a licence.
Korea Mobile Internet (KMI) is a group of MVNOs, which had a previous request for an operating licence rejected over concerns about commercial viability. A decision on its renewed bid is likely to come in early 2014, and if it wins this time, it aims to launch an LTE network in 85 cities by April 2015 with a target of over 8m customers within five years, and reaching break-even in 2020.
It claims it will differentiate itself by undercutting prices, slashing the current average phone bill by 60%, which would signify a fierce price war in a market which is highly saturated, and where the regulator is pressurizing the three existing cellcos ‘ SK Telecom, KT and LG U+ – to lower their rates too.
Korea is already highly competitive and its consumers are among the most broadband-hungry in the world, so the current operators have been driven to invest heavily in cutting edge LTE and LTE-Advanced platforms ‘ an effort which a new entrant may find it hard to match.
The KMI group would harness TD-LTE technology and claims it now has about $799m in capital from investors including China Telecom.