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Earthlink Teams Up With SK-Telecom
An anonymous reader writes "In a press release issued today, EarthLink, Inc and SK Telecom (Korea's leading mobile communications company) announced a definitive agreement to form a joint venture to market wireless voice and data services in the U.S called SK-Earthlink
Hopefully this means we here in the US will finally get some of those cool phones we hear so much about in other countries..."
"The wireless and Internet worlds are colliding, and neither will be the same again," said EarthLink founder and director Sky Dayton who will serve as chief executive officer of the SK-EarthLink joint venture. "In South Korea, kids on the street are using their mobile phones to listen to music, watch TV, videoconference, locate their friends, and access the Internet--as well as make voice calls--as opposed to the U.S. where the mobile experience is primarily about talking on the phone. Americans are living in the past. Utilizing emerging 3G networks and harnessing the explosive growth of Wi-Fi, SK-EarthLink will take the wireless experience in the U.S. to a new level."
I agree that Americans are living in the past, with the small exteptions of the T-Mobile Sidekick and the N-Gage the vast majority of mobile phone users or just talking or texting.
what? what I thought we were in the trust tree in the nest, were we not?
Can't wait to get a phone with a coffee maker and microwave that washes my windows while vacuuming the carpet before doing the dishes!!
http://pbx.mine.nu/huhuirc/
sorry about the broken link
Do they have the Inspector Gadget shoe phone? If so, would we really want? It might cut down on phone use while driving...
Hopefully they won't cripple any features, unlike someone else and what they did with Bluetooth...
Unfortunately that means not in my neck of the woods
Just what we need. Hear yet another of those blokes talk out loud in public places and show off the cool features to the whole population.
Not to mention those irritating ringtones.
While the service may have its benefits, to imply that these would just mean cool phones is a tad disturbing, really.
Isn't Sprint kind of "owned" the Earthlink?
...we had affordable, widespread cross-network texting way before it was big in America. Strange.
Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muß man schweigen.
CDMA, but different. Japan is totally different. If you're hoping to see neato features from either of those countries, it's unlikely. AT&T had some sort of partnership with DoCoMo that resulted in very little over here.
The growth market in the US is GSM. CDMA (Verizon & Sprint) aren't going away but their market will erode over time as GSM coverage becomes more widespread.
The biggest GSM feature in the rest of the world is SMS, which has never really taken off in the US the way it has elsewhere. This is primarily because the pricing structure in the US doesn't strongly favor using SMS over voice as it does in other parts of the world.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
I have never been able to get into using a cell phone like that, mine sits in the cradle except for when i use it to call someone. Yeah I do think having mapquest on my cell is cool for when i get lost, but there is an overload.
I hate speaker phones on cell phones, i want to choke nextel users whenever i see them rambling on their "touch to talk" phones. games on cell phones? never sitting still long enough to be using those. I would rather read a book then play a game on a damn phone. Amusing our selves to death.
Most Spam originates in the US.
I once called tech support from Hanoi and they were extremely rude. Don't let that happen to you and therefore stay away from them!
To balance the "greatness" of Korea and its "wonderful" society, read this news that appeared on all the news wires, including AP, Reuters, and AFP in 2005 January. Korean companies like SK Telecom treat their foreign employees like fodder. These Koreans force the foreigners to work in windowless (!) rooms for 14+ hours while toxic fumes accumulate in the rooms.
Usually these services come with significant charges... Here in Greece we have the ability to use 3G phones to watch tv, but I don't even watch TV on my TV, why would I want to pay lots more to watch it on my mobile? Sure, there are many great services (email on the mobile through GPRS, accessing webpages using Opera), but most are not that useful considering the prices...
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
SK-Earthlink sounds like ask a earthling... You're right, it should be ask an earthling, but when the Koreans pointed out the mistake their American counterparts at Earthlink just laughed and said: "Yah, right, now Koreans are gonna teach us American!" Maybe asking an earthling is not such a good idea...
I know we're supposed to keep it a secret from the americans, but we have flying cars now... with video phones.
You forgot the children...
Did he inhale?
No way would I want to be giving money to the C[ult]o$!!!
For all the commentary about "Americans" living in the past, few folks ever take culture or geography into account before they start slinging disparaging remarks. I urge all to consider the following:
1. Citizens of most States* live in sparsely populated areas, areas where the introduction of ordinary cellular service is not even in place because there are simply too few customers to support it. (In fact, only a few miles from my home is a town which bears the honor of being the last municipality in the nation to get access to land-line service, just a few years ago.)
2. In many States, electronic communication is considered impersonal and stand-offish. People are looking for more ways to engage in personal contact rather than through electronic means. This is one reason for 75mph speed limits.
3. Another cultural issue is the common preference for different appliances to do one specific thing. There is a large market for multi-watt "bag-phones" that do not even handle text, in more rural areas. (Largely because you can't operate one of those new phones while wearing thick leather gloves and driving a truck with the window rolled down.)
*The term "Citizens of most states" is used intentionally, rather than "Most Citizens of the States."
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
I can't wait to get behind someone on the freeway who is now videoconferencing while driving.
I do hope that the US can get it's collective head out of it's butt when it comes to wireless technology.
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
Maybe we'll finally get some of those mobile connections that don't just drop, like we hear about so much in other countries. If that's CDMA EV-DO VoIP, or UMA WiF/3G roaming, so much the better.
--
make install -not war
Aren't "Americans" being blamed for the greediness and shortsightedness of a handful of telecom monopoly CEOs ?
Can't I buy a nokia 3620 if I want or get a radio headset if I really wanted to ?
Isn't the real problem just pricing? Could you imagine someone doing BitTorrent downloads to their cell phone and getting charged 5 cents per 1k by Cingular if they went over the 1 meg limit ?
Also, if due to my specific interests, if I think I'd be better off with a laptop with highspeed wireless access than a dopey smart phone, is this really the same thing as living in the past ?
Did you here about the cell phones that rot and fertilize a built in sunflower seed! Better not drop it in water!
Now Earthlink, the official ISP of Scientology, controls the satellites! Hopefully they can now cleanse the atmosphere of non-positive engrams and orgone vapors.
This guy owns Earthlink. Or at least his company does.
WTF?
One wonders, as domestic ISPs get into bed with Korean data/telecom companies, if there's any leverage there when it comes to the insufferable flood of Korean-originated spam and that peninsula's cracker population. I know, it comes from everywhere, but lately I've been getting crushed by doorknob rattlers and Viagra salesmen from Korea. There are times when the only way to keep down the noise for twenty or thirty servers is to block out a whole Class B of addresses.
This is, of course, going to ultimately trip up legit Korean access to stuff I run for my customers, but the problem is completely out of hand. Anyone else suffering from this, and wondering if people like Earthlink wouldn't also be stomping their feet a bit to clamp down on it? Especially now that there's more money on the table.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I hate to break it to you, but the shoe phone wasn't from Inspector Gadget (although it did figure prominently in that cartoon). It was from Get Smart.
Would you believe I have the original right here?
Um, okay, then, would you believe an immaculate copy?
How about a cheap knock-off?
*sigh*... Okay, I only have an older, functional GAIT phone with a non-color LCD screen and a monophonic ring tone I composed myself (a musical interpretation of Phi, the golden ratio). Don't think I'd want to hike with the newest whiz-bang break-when-you-drop-it gadget phone, even if logging a geocache from the top of a mountain would be cool.
How many freeways are there in Japan? I think that the vast expanse of the US prohibits anything like this from catching on. You can't even get reliable service in many major cities, how is something cool going to take off? Public transportation is lacking, people drive everywhere, and for the most part we are insensitive idiots when it comes to technology. The only reasoning I can see is that people like to be annoying. I really would like to know how things are in Japan (and other countries) where mobile technology is rampant. Are people insensitive dickwads who annoy everyone around them with their techno-doodads, or is there more respect for others? Do people use those walkie-talkie features in restaurants and other public places? Do they drive like idiots because they are messing with their phones all the time? This may sound like a rant, but I REALLY would like to know from someone who has firsthand experience in a country other that the US.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
because Korean chicks are hot!!!
Whoa, thanks for the correction! What the heck was I thinking (am I even thinking)? Of course it was Get Smart. My memory is like, what are those things with holes called again, I can't remember? (Douglas Adams joke).
I suppose your phone is water-proof, or at least sweat-proof?
I, for one, welcome our new cell phone overlords.
(-10 Scary, strange) .. does anyone have his IP?
I will have to say this... This might be off topic though.
Earthlink (or should I say old Mindspring) used to be one of the best corporations out there, but before I quit in 2003, it had turned into one that I pitied every single customer I talked to.
Yes they had made some inter-corporate changes that seemed to be fairly poor (but I've worked for worse companies and worse PHBs), but I really pitied the customers as they called in.
So many issues of hodged podged equipment patched together.
But things might have changed equipment wise, but I think they are more corporate than ever. That said, I would not recommend Earthlink to anyone (go Covad people!) even with these new technologies, but it might be that I am jaded over the whole Charles Brewer leaving the company and layoff issue. And no... I quit before they closed our call center to pursue better jobs. If they are doing this like the past roll outs, it will be done in peicemail with no prior training or notification to the tech support or egineers and I bet there might be some employees of ELNK that might find out about this from this news post.
I could go on about horror stories about Early Termination Fee's and making customer go out with step ladders and extention cords to the NIC on the side of their house to prove to us that they indeed did not have a DSL signal before we would send the Telco out to look at it.
Damn I miss the mom and pop ISP days...
"I am the king of the Romans, and am superior to rules of grammar!"
-Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor (1368-1437)
You used to be able to get them on ebay, i feel really tempted sometimes.
Earthlink isn't Mindspring (or Sprint, do your research)..... Mindspring is long gone and if it wasn't swallowed by another company it would be dead by now anyways. You can't run a multimillion dollar ISP like a mom and pop shop that is constantly partying (liability issues abound)....growing pains are bound to be felt and oh, what is that.... do I sense a little resentment?
SK Earthlink isn't going to be Earthlink (even if they do offer bundling) and the experiences that you are describing are DSL customer experiences, not Earthlink Wireless Customer's experiences. SK Telecom (the Korean parent company) is the biggest employer in South Korea and they only hire a fraction of the applicants that apply. They treat their employees right and we could use some more of that over here in the US!
Who knows about the devices until the product line is revealed. It's nothing that we have seen or used before, but I doubt that CDMA could handle it. This is exciting news for everyone who wants to be on the forefront of technology. The rest of you can keep your shoe phones and AC adapters!!
the american lifestyle is so different from asia and europe, and naturally, the products people use are designed and marketed for the region. my uncle and his wife were visiting from korea and the cell phones they have is insane. the plans and coverage they have is even more insane. if you are as mobile as korean people are and use public transportation en masse as they do, do you REALLY want to be carrying around a separate cell phone, pager, mp3 player, digital camera, pda, etc., etc., etc.? for their needs, a super-wiz-bang cell phone with all those functionalities is exactly what they are looking for.
while i can certainly understand that some people may simply want a product to do one thing and do it well, something can be said about a product that can do most things decently well enough to satisfy the needs of the target market. in terms of call plans, my uncle's plan has an ala carte system which allows for INTERNATIONAL roaming for a nominal fee. he was making and receiving calls from korea here stateside as if he was in korea. the u.s. market has a looooong way to go, but, i suspect that unless american culture changes, the phones might be overkill here.
http://shit.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/01/26/1 51229
Let me tell you one thing.
I totally agree with your thoughts about mp3, disposable money and so on. I wouldn't buy cool color supporting mp3 cell phones either. But still cell phone service in the us is so retarded that all you can do with the phone is just to talk someone on the phone, which is not working very consistently, and getting voice messages. When I was in korea 5 years ago, I could communicate with people simply typing text messages without phone calls and it worked everywhere I went even underground subway train.
Now I have samsung phone for free, which was so expensive that i coudn't afford it when i was in korea, but although I've got the cool phone for free, sprint doesn't support text message service, and the phone signal is so weak that i can not get calls even in my house. besides the service cost is more than twice of the cost that i used to pay for, but the quality horribly sucks.
This is not about a 'cool' cell phone, it is about an upgraded phone service. And SK-telecom is not a phone-making company, it is wireless service company like sprint or singular, and remember they do not make cell phones.