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..."

Comments

Korea is a different frequency than the US

[winkydink]

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.

Re:Korea is a different frequency than the US

[Lisandro]

The key point here is price. SMSs are usually free or very very cheap compared to calls; here (Arg) everyone uses SMS regularly, instead of brief calls when needed. In that sense, i use my cellphone as a glorified pager most of the time.