Hanarotelecom Eying Next-generation Tele-com Convergence
- Posts black-ink figures in net income during the first six months of the year

Hanarotelecom succeeded in attracting $1.1 billion in foreign investments, the largest-ever single FDI amount in the telecommunication sector, last October in three months after Yoon Chang-bun took the helm of Korea's second largest broadband service provider. Yoon and his employees persuaded individual shareholders to approve the investment plan during the extraordinary shareholders meting on Oct. 21 last year.
Hanarotelecom posted 9.8 billion won in net income in the first six months of the year, being in the black for the first time since April 1999 when the business started. Behind the achievement was the reorganization of hanarotelem, conducted by President Yoon last December. At that time, the president overhauled the management framework under which each division chief takes responsibility over its own management performances and recruited excellent workers from outside.
Hanarotelecom has established itself as a full-fledged integrated telecom company with the launch of its long-distance and overseas call services on the existing intracity call services and broadband services on July 1. In celebration of its expanding business arena to long-distance and overseas call services, hanarotelecom unveiled its new corporate identity and logo.
Overhauling the company's CI is part of its strategy to lay a foundation for accelerating profit-making management by creating a new corporate culture in which staff members renew their determination to push constant changes and renovations and cope with rapidly-changing conditions of the telecommunication market. Virtually wrapping up such internal reform efforts as reorganization and reinforced education on staff hanarotelecom President Yoon has carried out since he took office last August, he has focused on a full-fledged profit-making management scheme on the occasion of overhauling its corporate identity, industry experts say.
The new CI visualizes and symbolizes hanarotelecom's will and vision on the pursuit of changes and development based on dynamics accumulated in the course of hardship and renovations like the successful inducement of foreign investments last October and reorganizations, company officials said. The new logo featuring a hummingbird, a symbol for achieving high performance, represents nimble hanarotelecom's efforts to meet clients needs and fix their inconveniences, said hanarotelecom officials, adding that it adopts a combination between magenta, a color of strong red category associating a leading IT player, and blue, a color symbolizing trust.
Hanarotelecom also unveiled the new version of its broadband service "HanaFos" while introducing its telephone service brand "hanafone" as part of its marketing efforts to reinforce intercity and international call services and in time for the expansion of the number portability system coming to Seoul in August.

Next-generation telecom services
Hanarotelecom is now future-oriented as the telecom operator is making preparations for offering next-generation services.
Hanarotelecom is seeking to offer a new portable Internet service, dubbed WiBro as part of its strategy to maximize its existing high-speed Internet service capabilities and differentiate it from other telecom operators by making up for the demerits of cema-2000 1x EV-DO and W-CDMA services.
In October 2000, hanarotelecom succeeded in commercializing 2.3GHz wireless local loop (WLL) service for the first time in Korea. Hanarotelecom achieved the feat after it mobilized about 150 workers and invested about 25 billion won in the project since it acquired the 2.3GHz bandwidth in February 1998. On top of the mobile internet service, hanarotelecom is making preparations for its entry into the broadband television service market, a combination of telecommunications and broadcasting, offering such valued-added services as T-Commerce.
In October of this year, hanarotelecom launched Internet video phone service using its own-developed VoIP (Voice over the Internet Protocol) and IP network, by proactively participating the government plan to build up the broadband convergence network (BcN) as part of the so-called "IT839 Strategy".
Hanarotelecom is also trying to explore futuristic businesses such as radio LAN-based Wi-Fi phone service and home gateway services. With one-stop services of intercity, intracity, and international calls available from July 1, hanarotelecom is planning to raise its intracity call market share from the current 4.8 percent to 6 percent by the end of the year and further up to 20 percent in 2008. Hanarotelecom has been credited with having contributed to the current boom of the broadband market with the commercialization of the world's first high-speed Internet service network ADSL. The company ranks second with a broadband service market of 24 percent.
Hanarotelecom President Yoon has recently become the recipient of the 2004 New Media Grand Award "The Telecommunications Man of the Year." Yoon warned that telecom operators would disappear like the dinosaur if they were complacent about the current situation rather than trying to adapt to the changing environment. He predicted that species foreseeing futuristic changes, not big and strong species, would survive according to Darwinism. Hanarotelecom, he said, is trying to spearhead the second broadband revolution in such varying fields as fixed-line, mobile, and broadcasting, cashing in on the broadband services the telecom operator has initiated in an early stage. Yoon said in reality Korea is facing difficulties like oil price hikes and sagging domestic demand, but the nation is unlikely to be falling into a Japanese version of long-term recession or stagflation.
Korea places first in terms of broadband service penetration in the world. The domestic IT industry has been growing at a breakneck pace, contributing to serving as one of growth engines of the Korean economy. The value, generated by the IT industry, tripled during the period between 1997 and 2003, the percentage of the IT industry of gross domestic product (GDP) doubled during the period from 8.6 percent in 1997. Despite the rapid growth in the IT industry, the domestic telecom market is witnessing a situation where new profit resources are badly needed to be explored as the intracity phone market is declining due to offsetting effects among fixed-line and mobile phone services and the broadband market is in a saturation stage, he said. nw