Web 2.0 Asia

Electronic Times reports (note: in Korean) that LG Telecom, the #3 mobile carrier of Korea with around 7 million subscribers, is aiming to provide a full-scale web-to-phone ("side loading") mobile multimedia content download service, starting from April 2007. Of course LGT's current WAP-based mobile content shop ("ez-i") will continue to exist, but it will be accompanied by the web-based shop.

This could possibly be the first case where a major wireless carrier is championing the fixed broadband internet as the delivery channel of multimedia content. Using this service, LGT users can download large files such as movies or music files onto their mobile phones without having to pay any data charges.

So why is LGT doing something that might look to the other carriers like "shooting its own foot"? Aren't the carriers supposed to be obssessed in drawing every possible penny of data ARPU from the users, which will supposedly help them recoup the money invested in 3G?

Obviously the answer lies in the user's preference: when it comes to a 30MB video podcasting or all the songs in one CD (about 50MB in size), nobody wants to download them to the phone via OTA.

As might be the case for all "underdogs" in the market, LG Telecom is always striving to be different, and whenever possible, undercut competitors' price. Which could be the reason why the company ranked the highest among Korean companies in the Top 100 IT Firms list.