RoK telecom places S-Fone on hold

The Republic of Korea (RoK)’s invested telecom SK Telecom confirmed on January 19 that it would make no further investment in S-Fone, putting the underperforming mobile service provider on life support.

Plagued by low profits and low subscription rates since it was launched in 2001, as a 230 million USD business cooperation contract (BCC) between SK Telecom and Sai Gon Post and Telecommunications Corporation (SPT), S-Fone was only able to sign up about 7.3 million subscribers to its CDMA network, a market share of less than 10 percent.

In a recent announcement, S-Fone had revealed that SK Telecom and SPT had inked a memorandum of understanding to change the form of their investment from a BCC to joint venture.
SK Telecom denied on January 18 that it was effectively pulling the plug on S-Fone, saying instead that it was now engaging SPT in discussions on future operations and other ideas that might be of mutual benefit.

SPT would continue managing the S-Fone network until a final decision was reached, the announcement said.

“We are still working well,” said S-Fone CEO Ho Hong Son, noting that the provider had already expanded its third-generation coverage (3G-EVDO) by building more transceiver stations.

Tags: Sfone, Vietnam Telecom

Posted by VBN on Jan 20 2010. Filed under HEADLINES, Telecommunication. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry