SK Broadband, Inc. , formerly known as Hanaro Telecom, is a

Seoul Seoul, officially Seoul Special Metropolitan City, is the capital city, capital and largest city of South Korea. The broader Seoul Metropolitan Area, encompassing Seoul, Gyeonggi Province and Incheon, emerged as the world's List of cities b ...

-based

telecommunications Telecommunication, often used in its plural form or abbreviated as telecom, is the transmission of information over a distance using electronic means, typically through cables, radio waves, or other communication technologies. These means of ...

company and a wholly owned

subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company (law), company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidia ...

SK Telecom SK Telecom Co., Ltd., abbreviated as SKT ( or ) is a South Korean wireless telecommunications operator and former film distributor and is part of the SK Group, one of the country's largest chaebols. It leads the local market with 50.5 perce ...

. It is one of the largest

broadband Internet In telecommunications, broadband or high speed is the wide- bandwidth data transmission that exploits signals at a wide spread of frequencies or several different simultaneous frequencies, and is used in fast Internet access. The transmission m ...

access providers in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the southern half of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and borders North Korea along the Korean Demilitarized Zone, with the Yellow Sea to the west and t ...

. Until its takeover in 2008, Hanaro controlled nearly half of the Korean

landline A landline is a physical telephone connection that uses metal wires or optical fiber from the subscriber's premises to the network, allowing multiple phones to operate simultaneously on the same phone number. It is also referred to as plain old ...

market, as it was the only last mile-competitive local exchange carrier ( CLEC) other than the state-owned KT Corp. SK Broadband also has a division known as "Broad &" that controls a large portion of the South Korean calling card market. In October 2014, SK Broadband unveiled the world's first 10 Gbit/s Internet service at the

ITU The International Telecommunication Union (ITU)In the other common languages of the ITU: * * is a specialized agency of the United Nations responsible for many matters related to information and communication technologies. It was established ...

Plenipotentiary Conference. The new Internet service is 100 times faster than existing LAN services in South Korea, which deliver download speeds of 100 Mbit/s.

History

Originally a domestic fixed-line carrier, Hanaro Telecom entered the broadband market in 1999 and grew from there to become a ‘ Triple-Play’ provider with

VoIP Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), also known as IP telephony, is a set of technologies used primarily for voice communication sessions over Internet Protocol (IP) networks, such as the Internet. VoIP enables voice calls to be transmitted as ...

service,

and an

IPTV Internet Protocol television (IPTV), also called TV over broadband, is the service delivery of television over Internet Protocol (IP) networks. Usually sold and run by a Telephone company, telecom provider, it consists of broadcast live telev ...

service branded as B.TV. In addition, Hanaro Telecom provides

leased line A leased line is a private telecommunications circuit between two or more locations provided according to a commercial contract. It is sometimes also known as a private circuit, and as a data line in the UK. Typically, leased lines are used by ...

services and IDC services to its corporate clients. Since 2000, Hanaro has participated in the Cisco Powered Network Program, a joint marketing program between Cisco and network service providers which offers public services over a network powered by

Cisco Systems Cisco Systems, Inc. (using the trademark Cisco) is an American multinational corporation, multinational digital communications technology conglomerate (company), conglomerate corporation headquartered in San Jose, California. Cisco develops, m ...

equipment. Hanaro Telecom and Korea Thrunet shared about 45 percent of the broadband market, with Korea Telecom, South Korea's incumbent telecommunications operator, commanding around 50 percent as of 2002. To consolidate its position in the broadband market, Hanaro acquired its second largest rival, Korea Thrunet, in March 2005 for 471.4 billion won ($460 million); the final price was five percent less than Hanaro's original offer to outbid Dacom. In February 2008, Hanaro Telecom was acquired by local wireless giant

for 1.09 trillion won ($1.2 billion). Its new name, SK Broadband, was adopted in September 2008. In 2015,

bought all of SK Broadband's stocks in a stock swap deal, the deal was finalized on July 1, 2015, and SK Broadband became a

wholly owned subsidiary A subsidiary, subsidiary company, or daughter company is a company completely or partially owned or controlled by another company, called the parent company or holding company, which has legal and financial control over the subsidiary company. Unl ...

. In November 2015, SK Telecom agreed to acquire a 30% stake in competitor CJ HelloVision for KRW 500 billion. The acquisition will make SK Broadband the No. 2 paid cable broadcaster in South Korea, following KT. In September 2021, SK Broadband sued American pay television service

Netflix Netflix is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming service. The service primarily distributes original and acquired films and television shows from various genres, and it is available internationally in multiple lang ...

to pay for the increased network costs and bandwidth which it blames on popular shows such as ''

Squid Game ''Squid Game'' () is a South Korean Utopian and dystopian fiction, dystopian Survival film, survival Thriller (genre)#Television, thriller horror television series created, written and directed by Hwang Dong-hyuk for Netflix. The series revol ...

''. SK Broadband claims that Netflix’s traffic on the ISP network has exponentially increased about 24 times, from 50 Gigabits per second in May 2018 to 1,200 Gigabits in September 2021.

Stock market listings

KOSDAQ The Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ; ) is a trading board of Korea Exchange (KRX) in South Korea established in 1996. Initially set up by Korea Financial Investment Association as an independent stock market from the Korean ...

NASDAQ The Nasdaq Stock Market (; National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the U.S. by volume, and ranked second on the list ...

( ADR) as Hanaro Telecom (ticker symbol HANA)

References

External links

* {{SK Group SK Group Telecommunications companies established in 1997 1997 establishments in South Korea 2008 mergers and acquisitions Companies based in Seoul Companies listed on KOSDAQ Telecommunications companies of South Korea

History

Stock market listings

See also

References

External links