Thursday, December 28, 2006 Ng: Looking for ways to connect in South Korea By Wilson Ng Wired Desktop
I AM visiting South Korea and I find the place very impressive. But before I start on the technical part, let me share one of the things I noted in coming here.
On the plane, there were over 250 passengers and only less than 10 of us were Filipinos. So, I guess that while Cebu has become a favorite place for Koreans, the reverse is not true. Of course, our spending power is much less compared to that of the Koreans.
I was also able to visit Jeju Island, which is located off Korea. It is a favorite holiday destination for Korean honeymooners and lately, has also started to make advancements in technology.
These places have something that I think we in Cebu should learn. Both of these islands are not only famous as tourist destinations, but are increasingly becoming known as an investment destination.
There are already moves by the Korean government to turn the whole island into a special economic zone while we in Cebu are still studying the proposal for the entire province to be declared into one.
On to the technical part. Korea is one of the few places in the world that is not compatible with our GSM cellular system. So when you come here, your phone is absolutely useless.
There are two things that you can do — you can either rent a cell phone with a Korean number using CDMA at the airport or you can rent a hybrid phone that allows you to use your SIM card into their CDMA system.
The advantage of the second option is that although you are using a CDMA standard, the people who text you or call you can still reach you at your original number.
There are two providers of these services here. One is KTF, which works with Digitel and Smart. So if you are a Globe subscriber, you should get the services of another provider here called SK Telecom.
However, beyond the ability of being able to receive text and calls, you probably won’t be able to use any of the advanced cell phone features, such as 3G or video calls. The daily charge of renting the cell phone, though, is not high (cell phone plus charger and extra battery for about P60 per day), but I am sure the roaming charges will be high. More on this later.
I was a little bit over-confident about my ability to be in touch. After all, South Korea is touted as the place with the most penetration of broadband. It is expected that over half of the household enjoy Internet connection at speeds that might well exceed 10 mbps, and it was reported also in various news magazines that there are also numerous Internet cafes for gaming, as well as the world’s most number of hotspots (reported to be well over 10,000 sites).
However, while I was able to get some free WiFi sites, most of the time they were encrypted and many required subscription. Most likely, if you are a local, you would pay a low monthly fee and you would be able to enjoy broadband cell features, and even Internet everywhere.
But for a visitor, it was somewhat difficult. Not only was I unaware what to do, but most of the WiFi warnings were in Korean and, thus, incomprehensible to me. So in the past few days, I was unconnected most of the time.
In today’s world where it is sometimes important to check your email as well as your text messages daily, the situation caused me some amount of trepidation. At any rate, if this was any other country, most of us won’t have a problem because our GSM phone can be used almost anywhere.
I noticed that while local service becomes cheaper, the roaming charges are becoming more expensive. In fact, it is not unusual that if you are in another country, and your phone usage remains the same as when you were at home, I am fairly certain that you will encounter daily charges that equal what you would pay the whole month.
There are some strategies that I use to minimize my phone call charges while outside the country. I will share this in future articles. Happy New Year to all!
