The article is about Korea's current telecommunication invest and business strategies. This article is quite concise and easy to catch the trend of international telecommunication investement. Please enjoy it.
Here is the location of the article: http://www.wimaxday.net/site/2006/12/01/sk-telecom-announces-125-million-investment-in-wibro/
Public Announcement: IRS Moves to Prevent Telephone Tax Refund Abuse; Helps Taxpayers Make Accurate Requests
(Based on the advice of the professor, Black, I switched this week's memo topic from international telecom. investment and business strategies to public annoucement)
On February 7th in 2007, the IRS (Internal Revenue Service) announced that it is starting investigation into prevent abuse by tax preparers and is helping taxpayers make accurate requests for the one-time telephone excise tax refund. In fact, the IRS has started to do special site visits with tax preparers across the nation this month and is planning to visit twenty two different tax prepares who have handled more than 1,500 tax returns.
Since the IRS authorized a one-time refund of the federal excise tax colleted on the long-distance service billed from the beginning of March 2003 to the end of July 2006, the IRS has monitored telephone excise tax refund requests for potential problems. By monitoring the requests, problems with returns from tax preparers who have criminal intent were found. In other words, some tax-return preparers are requesting thousands of dollars of refunds for their clients although their clients have the right to request only a tiny fraction of that amount. According to the IRS, the problems with returns from tax preparers are as follows:
· Some tax-return preparers requested an inappropriate amount the taxpayer’s phone bill instead of just the three-percent long-distance tax.
· Some tax-return preparers requested a refund in the thousands of dollars, suggesting that the taxpayer paid more for telephone service than they received in income.
The IRS is seriously warning tax-return preparers and of course taxpayers. According to the IRS, if tax preparers do not prepare accurate tax returns, civil penalties and criminal sanctions can be imposed. In addition, “taxpayers who request more of a refund than they are entitled to receive will have their refunds held, and they may be subject to an audit.”
Finally, to make for an easy and accurate refund, the IRS prepared several refund policies to respond to various cases. According to the IRS, it has prepared a standard refund amount policy, based on personal exemptions, ranging from $30 to $60, to estimate the reasonable amount for most individual taxpayers. However, “If taxpayers have phone bills and other records, they can request the actual amount of excise tax paid.”
The most correct information on this refund issue can be accessed in the Telephone Excise Tax Refund section on the website of the IRS. (http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=164032,00.html)
Reference:
Last December in 2006, SK Telecom, one of the leading Korean mobile carriers, announced that it would invest $125.8 million dollars for the expansion of its WiBro service in 2007. WiBro, Wireless Broadband, is a portable internet service, which provides a high data rate wireless internet access by using a 2.3 GHz bandwidth with PSS (Personal Subscriber Station) under the stationary or mobile environment, anytime and anywhere. According to the SK Telecom., the investment will be mainly used for two categories. One is relating to the expansion of its WiBro service from Seoul to 20 other cities in Korea. Another one is for subway stations in Seoul. In fact, the SK Telecom and KT, which is the largest fixed-line and broadband operator in Korea, agreed to deploy the subway base stations in a joint venture in 2006. With its network expansion, SK also plans to expand the services available for WiBro. SK announced last year that 30 new games will be available to its mobile users, and the same games will be available to WiBro subscribers in 2007. In addition, the company also announced that it has made an agreement with Google to develop a search engine for its mobile and WiBro services.
Business Strategies
Currently, SK Telecom is trying to figure out the right business strategies for its WiBro Services. According to SK Telecom, they are focusing on young customers in their teens through their thirties who are active and use the Internet intensively. In addition, the company is targeting customers that depend highly on groupware and portable PCs, such as finance and insurance firms for the business sector.
SK Telecom also plans to improve customer convenience and facilitate the WiBro service by developing new products that combine WiBro with existing relative services, such as CDMA and DMB (a television service with additional audio and data services that can be viewed on DMB cell phones, vehicle DMB, or portable DMB receivers). The company believes that popular combined services can ensure continuity of the WiBro service.
To facilitate the WiBro service and to help the price sensitive users, SK Telecom keeps the price for the service at a moderate level; so many users can enjoy the service by paying some amount of money which depends on a usage based charging system.
SK Telecom’s business strategy can be summarized as leading the new WiBro market by timely investments in complementary services, such as HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) which is a 3G mobile telephony protocol, providing a smooth evolutionary network path for higher data transfer speeds and DMB. In other words, it will redirect some portion of high capacity data service to WiBro while investing in HSDPA as its main product. In addition, because setting a moderate the service rate can be an essential factor in the success of the service, SK Telecom is considering a variety of rate systems to give satisfaction to the subscribers.
Reference:
1. WiMAX Day. “SK Telecom announces $125 million investment in WiBro”
Internet: http://www.wimaxday.net/site/2006/12/01/sk-telecom-announces-125-million-investment-in-wibro/, December 1, 2006 [Feb. 15, 2007]
2. IT Korea Journal. “World’s First ‘WiBro’ Service Launched”
Internet: http://www.rfhic.com/htm/bbs_images/Pre-WIMAX%20service%20introduction%20in%20Korea.pdf, July ~ August, 2006 [Feb. 15, 2007]
3. Wikipedia. “Definition of HSDPA”
Internet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSDPA, [Feb. 15, 2007]
The Korean telecommunication service market can be explained by three distinct stages. It includes industry creation in the 1980s, liberalization of the voice services market throughout the 1990s, and the emergence of data services with the advent of the information society in the new millennium [1].
In this memo, I will focus on 1990's liberalization of Korean telecommunications with a little regarding the industry's creation in the 1980's.
In the 1980's, the telecommunication goals for Korea was to construct a nationwide telecommunications infrastructure and to guarantee universal access to basic telephony service for the general public [2].
The Korea Telecom Authority (now KT) was established in 1981 to ensure that the goals were managed more efficiently. Finally, in 1988 Korea attained their telecommunication goals, thereby ushering the telecommunications industry into the age of "one telephone per household" [3].
The introduction of telecommunications liberalization in the 1990's grew more intense in the latter half of this period. In the 1990's, the markets that were the first to open up to competition were international and long-distance services with the entrance of Dacom (1992, 1996) and Onse (1997, 1999) [4]. Competition was unilateral in the sense that these companies had no other means of direct access to households other than providing services through KT’s network. After the first phase of telecommunications liberalization in Korea, competition moved to the mobile services market. According to the Korean goverment's annual statistics, the leader of the mobile services market has been SK Telecom since 1984, and it has been followed by late comers, such as Shinsegi Telecom in 1996 and three PCS (personal communications service) providers, including Korea Telecom Freetel, LG Telecom, and Hansol M.Com in 1997. As a result of the liberalization of telecommunications in Korea, the mobile facility-based service providers have grown enough to be on equal footing with KT in size, outperforming their number of subscriptions by September 1999 [5]. Finally, in 1988, Korea removed the foreign entry barrier that limited ownership in domestic mobile facility-based service providers, and also opened a door to foreign voice resellers, classified as special service providers in response to Korea's WTO agreement [6].
The WTO (World Trade Organization) strongly affected the liberalization of Korean telecommunications. The foreign entry barrier relating to telecommunications was gradually removed in response to strong pressure in during trade negotiations, such as the USTR (1989), UR (1994) and WTO (1997). In particular, the WTO negotiations on basic telecommunications opened up the Korean telecommunications market [7]. In fact, the WTO negotiation agreement brought major changes in the regulatory structure of Korean telecommunications, including the lifting of foreign entry barriers, correcting market distortion in local service, implementing competitive safeguards such as interconnection and parity in dialing, introducing a consumer-oriented service quality monitoring system and market-driven reshuffling of the industry.
In conclusion, liberalization of telecommunications in Korea was strongly affected by reformation effort of Korean government and WTO negotiation agreement, and it is successful so far. Because of liberalization, there has been an influx of foreign investment and the development of domestic competition leading to much expanded telecommunications services.
Reference
[1] Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Paradigm Shift in the Telecom Industry and Korea's Regulatory Reform" by Nae-Chan Lee.
Internet: http://www.kisdi.re.kr/advertise/pdf/1201-3.PDF, [Feb. 8, 2007]
[2] Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Paradigm Shift in the Telecom Industry and Korea's Regulatory Reform" by Nae-Chan Lee.
Internet: http://www.kisdi.re.kr/advertise/pdf/1201-3.PDF, [Feb. 8, 2007]
[3] Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Paradigm Shift in the Telecom Industry and Korea's Regulatory Reform" by Nae-Chan Lee.
Internet: http://www.kisdi.re.kr/advertise/pdf/1201-3.PDF, [Feb. 8, 2007]
[4] Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Paradigm Shift in the Telecom Industry and Korea's Regulatory Reform" by Nae-Chan Lee.
Internet: http://www.kisdi.re.kr/advertise/pdf/1201-3.PDF, [Feb. 8, 2007]
[5] Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Paradigm Shift in the Telecom Industry and Korea's Regulatory Reform" by Nae-Chan Lee.
Internet: http://www.kisdi.re.kr/advertise/pdf/1201-3.PDF, [Feb. 8, 2007]
[6] Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Paradigm Shift in the Telecom Industry and Korea's Regulatory Reform" by Nae-Chan Lee.
Internet: http://www.kisdi.re.kr/advertise/pdf/1201-3.PDF, [Feb. 8, 2007]
[7] Korea Information Society Development Institute. "Paradigm Shift in the Telecom Industry and Korea's Regulatory Reform" by Nae-Chan Lee.
Internet: http://www.kisdi.re.kr/advertise/pdf/1201-3.PDF, [Feb. 8, 2007]
Hello, class.
Here is an interesting article, which is "Local Government: FCC Not Playing Fair".
Although FCC does not an international organization, I think that this organization itself and their policies relating to telecommunication can be definitely important for the students in international telecom. policy or standardization classes. For this reason, I would like to share information of FCC with you.
If you guys have time, check this out!
Article Location: http://www.topix.net/content/ap/3762798474414742816105053963662419660426
The video game industry has been one of the fastest growing industries of the last few years, and the competition among the video game manufacturers, such as Sony and Microsoft, has increased as much as the video game industry itself. According to market research firm NPD Group, U.S. video game sales of software, hardware and accessories were up 19 percent to $12.5 billion in 2006 from 2005 [1]. The top two video game platforms from the last year were the Sony PlayStation 3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 [2].
Sony vs. Microsoft
Last year, Tokyo Microsoft Corp. introduced an external high-definition DVD player for the Xbox 360 video game console to match the Blu-ray disc capability of Sony Corp.’s PlayStation 3 [3]. The basic Xbox 360 does not come with the capability to play high-definition DVDs, but Microsoft launched their new peripheral which is based on HD DVD standard, which is a rival technology to Blu-ray, in a short period of time. In addition, Microsoft also announced that there will be 110 game titles available for the Xbox 360 in Japan by year's end, addressing a common complaint by video fans who said PlayStation offered more choices [4].
Sony also put some enormous amount of effort to widen the gap with Microsoft in the game console market. For example, even though Sony had to postpone the launch of the PlayStation 3 (initially planned for earlier 2006) twice, it had a built-in HD player when it was launched [5]. The fact that the PlayStation 3 had a high definition DVD capability was one of the most pronounced differentiating factors when compared to the Xbox 360.
The two companies continue to put new and unique features into their game consoles to differentiate their platforms and to ultimately win market share against each other. In addition to HD playing capabilities mentioned above for the PlayStation 3, it also features a browser with built-in Wi-Fi connectivity. In addition, Sony has permitted advanced computer and technology users to install additional operating systems such as Linux onto the PlayStation 3 [6]. This is a rather surprising move by Sony since game console manufacturers have been closely guarding their hardware traditionally. On the other hand, the Xbox 360 has a thriving online community and supplies a video download service unlike the PlayStation 3 [7]. The time magazine reports that “both the PS3 and Xbox 360 have talent beyond their ability to give gamers their fix. Where the PS3 has a remarkable aesthetic elegance, the Xbox 360 has a rugged connectedness [8].”
Who will win in the future?
I predict that there is a high probability that Microsoft will come out as the market leader in the video game industry in the future because I think that Microsoft’s response to the market trend is more appropriate than the one by Sony at this point. I believe that the seamless integration of various entertainment experiences such as watching movies, listening to music, and playing video games will become the most important factor for video game customers in the near future, and Microsoft has a lead in this area at the moment. For example, the Xbox 360 is all about the network. Xbox 360 knows about your music collection, and if the Xbox 360 is connected to your home network via Ethernet, you can quickly pull up tracks from PCs around the house [9]. In addition, according to the Time magazine, “you can also stream photos and videos, although not all formats are supported and the photo browsing, while thorough, lacked the sophistication of the PS3 [10].” Furthermore, I believe that Microsoft has the financial strength and software technology know-how relating to networking to ensure their victory over Sony in the future.
Reference
[1] Neowin.net. “Statistic of Video Game Market (2006)”
Internet: http://www.neowin.net/index.php?act=view&id=37093, Jan. 12, 2007 [Feb. 1, 2007]
[2] TMCnet. “Playstation3 Defeats XBox 360”
Internet: http://blog.tmcnet.com/blog/tom-keating/gadgets/playstation3-defeats-xbox-360.asp, [Feb. 1, 2007]
[3] International Herald Tribune. “Microsoft ups Xbox defenses vs. PlayStation and Nintendo with HD-DVD add-on”
Internet: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/20/business/AS_FIN_COM_Japan_Microsoft_Xbox.php, Sep. 20, 2006 [Feb. 1, 2007]
[4] International Herald Tribune. “Microsoft ups Xbox defenses vs. PlayStation and Nintendo with HD-DVD add-on”
Internet: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/20/business/AS_FIN_COM_Japan_Microsoft_Xbox.php, Sep. 20, 2006 [Feb. 1, 2007]
[5] International Herald Tribune. “Microsoft ups Xbox defenses vs. PlayStation and Nintendo with HD-DVD add-on”
Internet: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/09/20/business/AS_FIN_COM_Japan_Microsoft_Xbox.php, Sep. 20, 2006 [Feb. 1, 2007]
[6] TIME. “Sony PlayStation 3 vs. Microsoft Xbox 360 with HD DVD Player (Difference between Xbox and PS3)”
Internet: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1561414,00.html, Nov. 20, 2006 [Feb. 2, 2007]
[7] TIME. “Sony PlayStation 3 vs. Microsoft Xbox 360 with HD DVD Player (Difference between Xbox and PS3)”
Internet: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1561414,00.html, Nov. 20, 2006 [Feb. 2, 2007]
[8] TIME. “Sony PlayStation 3 vs. Microsoft Xbox 360 with HD DVD Player (Difference between Xbox and PS3)”
Internet: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1561414,00.html, Nov. 20, 2006 [Feb. 2, 2007]
[9] TIME. “Sony PlayStation 3 vs. Microsoft Xbox 360 with HD DVD Player Features of Xbox 360)”
Internet: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1561414,00.html, Nov. 20, 2006 [Feb. 2, 2007]
[10] TIME. “Sony PlayStation 3 vs. Microsoft Xbox 360 with HD DVD Player (Features of Xbox 360)”
Internet: http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1561414,00.html, Nov. 20, 2006 [Feb. 2, 2007]
