SK Telecom

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

**SK Telecom**
Korean name

Type	Public company KSE: 017670 NYSE: SKM
Founded	March 1984
Parent	SK Group
Location	Jung-gu, Seoul, South Korea
Key people	Shin Bae Kim (CEO) Jung Nam Cho (Vice-Chairman)
Industry	Telecommunication
Website	http://www.sktelecom.com
Hangul	SK텔레콤

SK Telecom (hangul:SK텔레콤, 에스케이텔레콤) is a leading South Korean mobile telecommunication operator, controlled by the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebol.

SK Telecom is the leading provider of mobile service in Korea, with around 50% of the market share as of 2005. It was branded as Speed 012 in the age of the pager, as the SK Telecom pagers had the area code 012. This was changed to Speed 011 when mobile phones became more popular around 1998, again 011 being the area code for SK phones. Currently, newly registered mobile phones in Korea start with the area code 010 regardless of service provider. This was partly because SK Telecom had achieved such market dominance that the 011 number became a brand in itself and was considered a case of implicit advertising/product placement, which is banned in Korea. SK Telecom had to be separated from SK Teletech, as the fact that SK Teletech's Sky mobile phones were configured only for SK Telecom service.

SK Telecom also offers a variety of internet services, many through its subsidiary SK Communications. Cyworld is one of the most popular blogging services in South Korea and NateOn is one of the most popular instant messengers.

1 Company history
2 Company Problems
3 Employee Conditions
- 3.1 Helio
4 See also
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Company history

The company was established in March 1984 under the name Korea Mobile Telecommunications Services Co., but was renamed Korea Mobile Telecommunications Corp. (KMT) in May 1988. In June 1994 SK Group became KMT's largest shareholder. KMT officially joined the SK Group in January 1997 and changed its name to SK Telecom in March of that year.

In October 2000, SK Telecom became the second operator in the world behind NTT's DoCoMo to launch a commercial 3G service using WCDMA technology. In January 2002, this was followed up by launching the world's first CDMA2000 1xEV-DO network, offering greatly increased data transmission speeds.

In May 2005, SK Telecom decide to sell 60% of SK Teletech stock to Pantech Curitel. In 2006, SK Teletech is changed brand name into "SKY" and remains as Pantech Curitel's premium brand mobile phone line.

[edit] Company Problems

Sk Telecom has for the last 2-3 years been the object of takeover bids from Sovereign Asset Management, a Singapore based investment company because of its very large operating costs considered as waste. Sovereign Asset Management has repeatedly tried to take over SK Corp which owns the largest share of SK Telecoms stock. This takeover attempt is a feature in Korean news before every shareholders meeting, each year. During South Korea's IMF crisis in the last 10 years most "Chaebal" were bought out by foreign companys e.g. Daewoo was separted into many companies like "GM Daewoo" for car manufacture. SK Telecom is still viable for take over because of financial laxety. The head of SK Group, Tae-Won Chae was imprisoned for 7 months after being convicted of corruption in 2003.^[1]^[2]

[edit] Employee Conditions

SK Telecom has its own workers union as a subsidiary of the SK workers union. All employees are guaranteed a working position at SK Telecom until they are 45 years old (western age). An employee may only be fired for commiting a criminal offence against the company - a side effect of this is that no employee really cares about his/her job and it is not unheard of for employees to make mistakes that cost the company millions of dollars with no punishment. Employees not desired by the company any more are given over to the "Manpower Surplus Team" where they are just paid to sit at theirs desks until they can find another job or until they become 45 years old. SK Telecom follows a management system called SKMS (SK Management System). Created by SK Companies. 6Sigma is also popular in SK Telecom although 6Sigma is problematic in terms of a service company and should only be used for manufacturing companies that can take large statistical samples. In mid-2006 SK Telecom had 13 non-Korean employees. 1 UK, 1 USA, 1 Chinese, 10 Korean American out of approx. 6000 employees. In 2007 this was reduced to 11 non-Korean employees. 1 Chinese and 10 Korean Americans.

[edit] Helio

Main article: Helio

On January 26, 2005, SK Telecom announced that it had formed a new joint-venture with Earthlink to form a new US mobile carrier named Helio. Combined with Earthlink, Helio is expected to offer a variety of advanced mobile devices, many of which are currently for sale in Korea. These models would be refined and updated for use by tech-savvy American consumers, allowing for the first time handsets with functionalities previously unavailable in the US market. The venture operates on the premise of being a mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), using CDMA 1xEVDO network capacity leased from Sprint Nextel. Their current devices include the Kickflip, the Hero, and the Drift.