South Korea's KT Telecom may be losing its iPhone exclusivity, but last week revealed it had gained an edge in another respect by achieving coast-to-coast coverage for its WiBro service.
The company said the network, built on the homegrown wireless broadband standard, now covers 85% of the nation's population across 82 cities, ETNewsreported.
KT is banking on the service, which launched in June 2006, to address demand for high-speed wireless data services while the LTE technology being deployed by its rivals matures.
SK Telecom and LG Uplus plan to launch LTE services in July. But SK Telecom doesn't expect to reach nationwide coverage until 2013, potentially giving KT a head-start.
KT boasts peak data rates of 40.3Mbps for its WiBro network.
The operator has responded to its imminent loss of iPhone exclusivity by extending its partnership with Samsung, and recently launched the first WiBro compatible tablet, the Galaxy Tab WiBro.
The operator also plans to introduce more phones supporting WiBro, Wi-Fi and W-CDMA alike. The first device to incorporate each of what the operator calls the 3W, the HTC Express, debuted in May 2010.