Korea’s Hanaro Telecom reported a significant slowdown in its growth of broadband customers in Q4 2002 due to increased ADSL customer churn. Hanaro said KT’s aggressive VDSL marketing beginning in Q3 led to a net decrease of 15,776 Hanaro ADSL subscribers. Hanaro is now offering a market leading VDSL service with a speed of 20 Mbps downstream and 6 Mbps upstream priced at KRW 56,000 per month (US$46). Hanaro is also preparing to launch a 50 Mbps VDSL service.
Hanaro’s total broadband subscriber base at the end of Q4 was 2,877,526, an increase of 0.86% from 2,852,976 at the end of Q3. The proportion of subscribers for products such as Pro (up to 8 Mbps), Mid (up to 3 Mbps) and Lite (up to 1 Mbps) was 19.6%, 3.5% and 76.9%, respectively.
For 2002, Hanaro reported its first operating profit of KRW 6.1 billion (US$ 5.13 million), compared to its loss of KRW 165.2 billion in 2001. For Q4 2002, operating profit rose 47.8% to KRW 20.2 billion from KRW 13.6 billion in Q3.
http://www.hanaro.com
