LIVE FROM MOBILE ASIA EXPO 2014: The increasing consumption of multimedia content on mobile devices has boosted SK Telecom’s revenue and customer loyalty, according to Jungho Shin (pictured), director of the home and media team in the marketing strategy office for the South Korean operator.

Shin said watching content via a mobile network “requires a huge amount of data traffic which then generates revenue”.

Users of SK Telecom’s IPTV service BTV Mobile, for example, consume an average of 1.7GB per month watching TV content via LTE. The service accounted for 2 per cent of total data consumption on SK Telecom’s network in April.

Several trends have boosted the consumption of multimedia content: “With the arrival of LTE, faster speed and larger screen have made media consumption easier than ever before,” Shin noted.

Services like BTV have also encouraged consumers to take out higher data plans and led to lower churn, Shin explained. SK Telecom introduced an unlimited data plan in March, with subscribers paying $80 per month to use the top-end service.

“If more people consume better content and pay for the additional data traffic, telcos like SK Telecom will certainly benefit from it,” Shin said.

BTV itself is also starting to become a good revenue source, with advertising and commerce via the service taking off about a year after its launch on LTE.