BARCELONA, Spain ― SK Telecom plans to triple the size of the firm’s business-to-business solution projects up to 1.5 trillion won ($1.4 billion) in sales by 2015 as part of its efforts to move beyond the telecom business.

Ha Sung-min, chief executive of the country’s top mobile carrier, also said it would secure 7 million customers in its media business, which includes Internet protocol televisions, and have its health care project grow into one that produces 1 trillion won in sales by 2020.

“In terms of business-to-business solutions, venture firms have many of the technologies,” he said in a press conference on the sidelines of the Mobile World Congress. “We’re planning to lead growth in that sector through a number of small mergers and acquisitions.”

Ha’s comments come amid the telecoms’ intensifying competition in the already saturated Korean market. With the mobile carriers finding difficulty in launching successful overseas projects, they have been trying to look for new growth engines to drive further growth and revenue.

The 56-year-old chief executive officer, who joined parent company SK Group’s top decision-making body SUPEX this year, also said that it would commercialize the next-generation communications technology called LTE-Advanced by September. LTE-A is known to be twice as fast as the existing fourth-generation LTE networks.

Ha said he discussed partnerships in developing handsets that run on the LTE-A networks with Samsung Electronics, stating that they would be ready in the next seven months.

“The handsets could be released even sooner (than September),” he said.

SKT and Ericsson, the world’s top telecommunications equipment manufacturer, agreed on Monday to work together in the development of LTE-A technologies.

At this year’s MWC, the two firms demonstrated the technology dubbed LTE-A Super Cell 1.0 which virtually eliminates inter-cell boundaries for seamless communication service.

On another front, he said that the need for multiple mobile platforms was rising among global mobile carriers, indicating that they were currently too concentrated on Google’s Android mobile operating system.

“There’s no need (for telecoms) to rush into making choices because this is a decision that needs to be made by customers. However, the cooperation between manufacturers and mobile carriers seems highly critical.”

By Cho Ji-hyun, Korea Herald correspondent
(sharon@heraldcorp.com)