Helio, a joint venture company established by SK Telecom and EarthLink, an ISP in the US, is in a full fledged marketing effort for its service and brand in the US.

Since its service inception on May 2nd, the company has been holding demonstrations of its product to the public in such cities as LA, New York, San Francisco Chicago, Seattle and Washington DC. ‘Helio’ will continue these events until June, focusing on major cities in which Korean community activities are moving briskly.

Through these events, the company demonstrates how to send and receive text messages to/from Korea, how to make international calls to Korea via mobile phone, and how to download Korean music videos. Notably, the Helio brand and products were introduced in a ‘Hollywood Bowl Korean Music Festival’ which took place in LA on May 20, 2006.

Until June 30th, Helio plans to carry out varied promotion events for those who subscribe to the Helio service. These include free download services of two mobile games, two ‘Live Bell’ music choices and 100 minutes of free international calling to Korea.

As part of its marketing strategies, the company has offered free Helio handsets to celebrities including Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise and professional female Korean golfers, such as Pearl Shin, who participates in the LPGA Tour in the US. Most notably, Tom Cruise was shown using Helio’s bilingual jet-black handset “Hero” in the US, as well as throughout the world, the Helio brand started drawing keen attention from the market.

By focusing on securing Korean American subscribers, Helio will release a ‘Korean Short Messaging Service’ (SMS) in the US on June 10th. This service lets subscribers send and receive Korean text messages in the US, as well as to/from Korea.

Through the Korean SMS, subscribers can send and receive Korean or English short messages in the US, or between the US and Korea through handsets that support both the Korean and English languages. The subscribers to ‘All-In Membership Rate Plan’ (Type III) are allowed to use the SMS without limits, and the subscribers to ‘Selective Rate Plan”(Type I) pay ten cents for each sending or receiving of a short text message. This service is expected to quickly attain great popularity among the two million Korean Americans in the US.

Helio is extending its sales network, focusing on such electronic stores as Fry’s Electronics, Goody and Suncoast. In particular, the company plans to concentrate on key sales channels in Korea- towns in the US. Helio will be available in 3,000 retail locations nationwide, by the end of this year.

Helio plans to further attract subscribers by catering to the tastes of young and tech savvy users with the various marketing methods that proved successful in Korea. Such methods include providing subscribers with online marketing channels through a partnership with MySpace. Helio expects to acquire 3.3 million subscribers by 2009 through actively carrying out marketing activities that cater to the US telecom market environment and cultural characteristics.

‘By applying the SK Telecom marketing strategies that gained great success in Korea’s telecom market, we will break into the US mobile communications market early on’ said Won Hee Sul, president of Helio.

Helio’s official launching ceremony took place on May 19, 2006 at the Park Hyatt Hotel in LA. About 200 guests participated in the ceremony. These included: Shin Bae Kim, president of SK Telecom, Sky Dayton, CEO of Helio, Sun Hong Choi, president of Feelingk, Jae Hee Shim, president of Ntels, Tom Cruise and his wife Katie Holmes, and Chris Nam, chairman of the Korean Society of LA.

‘This is a great opportunity for us to demonstrate our advanced CDMA technology-based wireless Internet service in the US. We hope to gain great success in this market of great potential’ said Shin Bae Kim, CEO of SK Telecom, during his congratulatory speech at the ceremony.

In addition, Sun Hong Choi, president of Feelingk, who received a plaque of thanks for representing SK Telecom’s business partners, commented ‘I hope that Helio’s launch will provide great momentum in Korea’s active search for new growth engines. Through this service operation, the cooperative ties between small-, medium- and large-sized companies will be further strengthened so we can all win together’.

An Arbitration Tribunal in Zurich has ruled that Russian Information Technology and Communications Minister Leonid Reiman laundered money in an attempt to buy a 25 per cent stake in third placed Russian cellco MegaFon.

According to a report on Dow Jones newswire, Reiman was the only beneficiary of a 25 per cent stake option in MegaFon held by Bermuda-based company IPOC International Growth Fund.

The dispute began in 2003, when Russian conglomerate Alfa Group, now known as Altimo, bought an investment company called LV Finance along with a 25 per cent holding in MegaFon.

But because Alfa is also a majority shareholder in Russia’s second placed cellco, VimpelCom, IPOC, which owns 5 per cent of MegaFon, claimed Alfa’s move violated an option agreement it had with LV as well as MegaFon’s shareholder agreement.

IPOC then claimed it had already made payments towards the option of acquiring the 25 per cent stake in MegaFon, around the same times as Alfa’s acquisition of LV.

A drawn out tussle in the courtroom has finally revealed that Reiman, and not Danish lawyer Jeffrey Galmond, as previously disclosed, is the main owner in IPOC’s businesses.

According to the report, LV alleges that the ruling shows that Reiman was in breach of his official responsibilities and claims the Tribunal found that the money used by IPOC to make the payments on the option had been criminally sourced.

The introduction of mobile devices such as a wi-fi enabled iPod, and the ubiquity of broadband will result in 100 million consumer mobile VoIP users in 2011, according to a study from research house ON World.

With many anticipating that Apple will add wi-fi and VoIP to its iPod to make the killer converged mobile entertainment device, the company, and other like it, will be in prim position to exploit the ideal services model – the real time internet.

ON World interviewed 100 key technology influencers in several consumer markets as well as electronics retailers and discovered that 35 per cent were interested in VoIP combined with mobile entertainment devices.

Mareca Hatler, ON World’s director of research, said: “Convergence between the PC and telecom industries has been the mantra for the last several years. But Skype, Google, device makers such as Apple, and municipal mesh infrastructure providers such as Tropos are creating the ‘real time internet’ without them.”

The PC industry will ship more than two times as many mobile VoIP devices per year as the telecom industry by 2011, Hatler believes. While wi-fi enabled mobile entertainment devices will make up 36 per cent of all mobile VoIP devices sold in 2011. This will be driven by the popularity of Apple’s iPod as well as products such as Nokia’s Internet Tablet 2006 bundled with GoogleTalk.

ON World predicts that by 2011 Skype will have 25 per cent of the world’s VoIP users and $1.2bn (ВЈ640m) in voice service revenues.