Justin Hall's cellular woes in South Korea

Justin Hall writes an interesting article in The Feature about trying to get a cellular phone in Korea. He wanted one that had English menus and a camera, allowed him to receive calls from outside the country and let him keep his phone number even if he doesn't use the phone for months.

In many countries, if you're not a citizen or have a residency card, you can't get a cellular phone with a contract -- just a prepaid phone. Unfortunately, prepaid service often means you're stuck with crummy phones, high airtime prices and a pathetic lack of services compared to those offered to subscribers with contracts.

Justin had a relatively long list -- but certainly not an unreasonable list -- of requirements. I can empathize completely. I used to go to London several times a year and explored getting a cellular contract, but couldn't because I wasn't a resident. I got a prepaid Virgin Mobile Nokia phone and I like the service, but that's another story.

Justin's plight

Justin spent hours in Seoul trying to get what he wanted. Finally, he found a Samsung -- for almost $600 (gulp) -- using SK Telecom'snetwork that would meet all his requirements. He purchased the handset and a prepaid card.

He scratched the card and read, "note: pre-paid phones can not receive calls from overseas. And, any unused credit will expire after 30 days of no use, along with your phone number." He was not pleased.

Justin was willing to use his credit card as a deposit and be billed for the months he wouldn't be in Korea. No deal. He wound up renting a phone from a local mall. Not an ideal situation, but at least he had a phone.

Foreigner's problems

Justin told his SK Telecom translator he was going to write about his experiences. The translator said, "We think you are one case in a million." He might have more stringent requirements, but he certainly isn't unusual.

I feel bad for him. As a wireless person myself, I, too, would have wanted to get the latest and greatest cellular phone in Korea -- but it would be useless if I couldn't get overseas calls.

At least Justin has a good service in Japan which, he writes, allows foreigners to keep their phone number through months of inactivity....assuming you're willing to continue to be billed every month.

CDMA-land

South Korea is unique. It's a CDMA country so a GSM phone, which works in just about every other country, won't work in Korea. I can use my Verizon Wireless CDMA phone in Korea, but that's about it for roaming. That's why I have a T-Mobile GSM phone, a prepaid phone for the U.K. and a prepaid phone for Australia (just for the fun of it).

The cheapest way to make phone calls in most countries -- if you'll be there for any period of time -- is to take an unlocked GSM phone (that isn't locked to a specific cellular operator), purchase a SIM card and some airtime minutes.

Insert the local SIM card into your phone and you're a "native," in a sense. Rather than paying your U.S. GSM operator's roaming charges, you'll probably get all your in-country incoming calls for free (calling party pays is the rule in most countries), pay dramatically less per minute for making local calls and probably save a fair amount of money calling overseas.

Camera phone woes

Justin wanted a camera phone. Naturally, I don't blame him. I can't imagine traveling to another country and not having a cellular phone with camera. Indeed, part of the fun of traveling will be the ability to take photos and send them to your friends, relatives and business associates hundreds, thousands of miles away.

Although I can't imagine it, I certainly can imagine not being able to get what I want! Interoperability is a huge problem. It's becoming much less of a problem in Europe with MMS standards, but in many other areas of the world, transmitting a photo to an e-mail address is not as easy as it might seem.

Indeed, you need to understand that you can send your photos via MMS or via e-mail. The latter is used for handset-to-handset transmission. Typically, you'll pay a fee for every photo sent. Via e-mail, you often may send the same photo to the multiple recipients for the same fee as to one person, but you generally can't send it handset-to-handset.

Control freaks

The second reason for the lack of interoperability is that cellular operators are control freaks. Many cellular operators don't want to make it easier for subscribers to transmit photos to other operators' handsets.

It took years for the European operators to provide interoperability for SMS. The result was an explosion of use of SMS. When cellular subscribers are able to send photos to any handset, the market also will grow dramatically.

But like water dripping on a rock, the lessons of interoperability take a long time to penetrate the thick, dense skulls of cellular marketing executives. (I.Q. chart here; scroll down the page)

Finances, not technology

What Justin experienced, though, was not a technical problem, but a financial problem. SK Telecom turns the screws on prepaid customers. Use your airtime in 30 days or you lose it. And, oh, by the way, thanks for spending $600 on a phone, but you can't use it to receive overseas calls.

My solution to deal with cellular executives is to get a red hot poker and, uh, never mind.

Comments

[Pete]

Hey! you can use web service for sending a text message to any cellphone in Korea, but you need to register.
Send me an email for information.

[BDB]

Hi all, I lived in South Korea for three years. After leaving, I wanted to keep in touch with some friends there. Easy with sms, but not possible from europe. It appears that GSM will not talk with CDMA. Does anyone have any experience of this? How can I resolve this? I live in the UK, and still want to send sms to South Korea. If anyone has found a solution I would appreciate it.

[Epidot]

You guys seem to know quite a lot about South Korea... So I like to add a question (a bit) related to this thread.

I have a friend in South Korea and I have not yet found out how I can possibly send an SMS (or MMS) to his telephone from Switzerland. Sending it directly from my cellular does not work and I have not found any (free) Internet service that is capable of sending an SMS to a South Korean telephone!?!

Any advice?

[Nathan]

You guys are the pickiest people on the face of the planet. I live in Korea as a resident and virtually everyone here uses prepaid cell phones from either KTF, Anycall, Speed 011 or SK Telecom. I found a great phone that allows me to recieve calls from anywhere in the world.

if you come to Korea, dont go to SK telecom. They will try to screw you. Go to Yongsan Electronics market. Hundreds of thousands of phones that will do anything you want them to, even (gasp) take pictures!

CDMA, while not as common, is a far superior technology to the GSM Europe and the North America use.

[Paul]

Dear Mr. Reiter:

Interesting. It appears that the Philippine mobile phone market is way ahead of its foreign counterparts.

Philippine pre-paid card users can receive overseas calls, and credits last for 60 days from first use. It's possible to top up your credits with a credit card too. On some networks, pre-paid users can also access the Internet via GPRS. Need a new number? You can buy one, even anonymously, for something like US$ 5.00 tops.

SMS interoperability between the three mobile phone networks has been standard for years now, although it had to take some political arm-twisting to get it done. I am not sure yet about MMS interoperability.

I am very interested in the evolution of camera phones, so I have added you to my blogroll.

Best regards.