SK Telecom announced Wednesday that it had struck an alliance with Verizon Communications to commence an automatic roaming service between Korea and the United States on March 23, enabling mobile phone users to use the same phone in either country. Shin Young-cheol executive director of the Korean telecom giant said the company will begin the roaming service in 19 major cities including New York, San Francisco, Washington DC, Chicago and Hawaii, adding the service would be expanded to every state in the US before the end of the year.
SK Telecom will also provide a roaming service to major Chinese cities from May 27 in association with China Unicom. As a result, domestic mobile phone users of the 011 or 017 service will be able to use the same handset and phone number in America and China.
To use the service, users have to change a software application on the mobile phone available at SK Telecom branches nationwide and roaming centers in airports before departing from the country. The cost is, however, more expensive; calls from the US to Korea will cost W1,753 per minute compared to fixed line calls of W585 per minute.
(Kim Ki-hong, darma90@chosun.com)
