LG Uplus Corp. is a South Koreancellularcarrier owned by LG Corporation, Korea's fourth largest conglomerate and parent company of LG Electronics. It was formerly known as LG Telecom. The carrier adopted its current name after the July 2010 merger with another two LG telecommunication subsidiaries, Dacom and Powercom. LG U+ offers a variety of mobile services. BankOn is one of the most popular mobile banking services in South Korea and MusicOn is a music e-store.
History
After a decision of the state-owned Korea Telecom to sell its cellular business to private investors in 1994, the South Korean government opened the telecommunications sector up to competition. Korea Telecom would later relaunched its cellular business with KT Freetel in 1996. LG entered the wireless communications market in 1996 by acquiring a CDMA license in June and founded a new carrier named LG Telecom, which built a nationwide digital cellular network. In October 1997, PCS cellular service was launched. In March 1998, in an effort to make itself stand out from the bigger, more established players in the market, LG Telecom launched the world's first commercial cdmaOne data service using PCS technology. To better position itself to compete in the bundled services market LG Telecom acquired LG Dacom, a fixed-line communications networks and Internet-related service provider and LG Powercom, one of Korea's largest ISPs. On July 1, 2010, LG Telecom switched to its current name, "LG U+."
Services
Wireless
As of 2012 LG Uplus customers can receive the services on any of radio frequency band assigned, one or more of radio interfaces.
In July 2006, the SouthKorean government canceled LG Telecom's license for 2.1 GHz W-CDMA bandwidth after the company opted not to develop the technology. LG Telecom will instead continue investing and upgrading in its CDMA2000EV-DO Rev. A network. In July 2011, LG U+ launched its LTE network, nationwide coverage is expected to be complete by March 2012. On July 17, 2013, LG Uplus launched LTE-A service with the introduction of the Galaxy S4 LTE-A, the world's first "100% LTE" smartphone that can utilize data, voice and text with LTE and not fall back to CDMA. Starting from 2014 LG Uplus plans to release only "100% LTE" phones.
Landline
In 2010 LG Telecom acquired Dacom Corp., a network services firm that operated Hanaro Telecom's fixed line networks. The new affiliate helped LG enter the landline communications market.
Broadband
Launched in September 2005, U+Home is an optic LAN service that provides fast speeds of up to 100Mbit/s.
IPTV
U+TV was launched in December 2007, providing various two-way services, terrestrial and HD broadcasting.
Business-to-business sales
After merging LG DACOM in 2010, It was succeeded to LG Uplus one of the largest B2B service area. It is account for about 20% of gross sales by the role of cash-cow. It has not only traditional cable industry, also non-traditional one like electronic payment and so on.
