KT officially announced that they will pursue VoIP business aggressively. They released brand-new VoIP phone called “STYLE”.
The “STYLE” phone was developed ReignCom which has a reputation for MP3 player, iriver. This phone is not simple VoIP phone. KT named this type of phone “SoIP (Service over IP) phone” which supports a lot of functions such as providing home-banking service, newspaper service, internet connection, video-call and SMS.
KT was originally conservative for VoIP service, because they already dominated Korean PSTN market. As VoIP market has grown, their revenue from fixed voice service has decreased. Fixed VoIP service has jumped over and finally achieved total fixed voice market share of 10 percent in late last year.
KT maintained their lone position in the fixed voice market in spite of VoIP’s steady attack. However, as the fixed number portability was available from late last year and the fixed voice market environment is changing, KT finally gave up their former position and jumped into VoIP market. KT has around 32,000 VoIP customers, but they set up a target to attract 2 million VoIP customers through protecting their own PSTN customers from other VoIP service providers such as LG Dacom and Samsung Networks and migrating them from PSTN to their own VoIP service.
Even though KT‘s fixed voice revenue seems to decrease by focusing on VoIP service, they is expected to make up the revenue with additional ARPU acquired from various value-added services of their brand-new “STYLE” phone.
