SK Earthlink, Part 1

SK-Earthlink (boingo) - This is a MVNO from a Korean carrier and Earthlink. Now this is an interesting combo. SK, the sumo-class CDMA carrier from Korea, getting together with serial entrepreneur Dayton and Earthlink to run on...Verizon's network? Sprint's network? SK could bring quite a lot to the party (besides money). Each of the JV partners is putting in $220M. And, as an MVNO, it's not for the network. gotta love the enthusiasm for mobile broadband in the U.S. by these two groups.


We don't see the market as being crowded, we see the market growing, Cole said. We?re not proposing these awful companies you see in Europe?these low-cost discounters. We're talking about guys who are adding value. For the moment, the U.S. market is massive, and it is still embryonic.

Here here!

Glenn Fleishman has a good overview of the new business. In his view, Matthew Maier from Business 2.0 points out that extreme segmentation (thinner slices) will be needed to succeed. Which begs the question, is Earthlink a thin slice? It's hardly the MTV phone, or the NFL phone, etc. No, it's rather the geek market that earthlink goes after.

Think of SK-EarthLink as the wireless carrier for the geek squad. When it launches later this year, it will target what Dayton calls "Internet-savvy early adopters"

This smells like the DoCoMo/AT&T JV (I mean, the failed DoCoMo/AT&T JV). Without about 5% of the ingredients that DoCoMo had with i-mode this was bound to fail in the U.S. This JV makes more sense and one hopes they make their $440M back.

It's also curious how the Korean strategy with TDD and WiMax plays into this, if at all. the licenses were just issues, and SK (naturally) has one of them. At WCA last month, Hanaro presented a presentation (sorry about my messy notes) that pitched WiBro that described a path that demonstrates WiBro this year, has Seoul up in 2006 with 1-3 Mbps and by 2008 has a fully mobile network delivering 2-20 Mbps "everywhere".

Here's a flashpaper verision of a WiBro oveview from Samsung.