South
Korea's fixed-line operator KT announced on July 27, 2010 that the company
plans to spend 5.1 trillion Won (US$4.3 billion; US$1=1,191 Won) on upgrading
fixed-line and wireless networks over the next four years, according to the
Korea Times. It is estimated that the scheduled 3G network and 4G LTE (Long
Term Evolution) network upgrade projects will cost KT 2.4 trillion Won (US$2.0
billion) and 1.67 trillion Won (US$1.4 billion), respectively. The network upgrade
project is also expected to include expansion in wireless network coverage and investments
in Wi-Fi, WiBro, and cloud computing or renting servers for data storage and
access.
KT's
move is reportedly aimed at meeting the increasing demand for data usage. Smartphone
subscribers used 21 times more data than conventional mobile phone users,
according to KT, and data traffic also grew threefold in the past six months
till May 31, 2010.