KT starting WiBro test in Seoul

Korea Telecom, which debuted its much-anticipated WiBro wireless broadband service late last year at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in South Korea, has announced that it will launch WiBro on a test basis beginning tomorrow to about 200 of its employees in Seoul, South Korea.

The announcement apparently came in the last few days, with Korean press reporting the news yesterday. This initial rollout is expected to precede broader commercial availability to thousands of customers later this spring, according to KT. Several press reports suggested that the service will become fully commercial in June.

WiBro uses the 2.3 Ghz spectrum and can theoretically offer downstream bandwidth of around 3 Mb/s. A KT official told Telephony late last year that the carrier's initial field trial were producing speeds consistently around 1 Mb/s. Competitively, the service will be pitted against SK Telecom's 3G mobile service, but SKT also eventually plans to launch WiBro