VIDEO INTERVIEW: South Korea’s KT is open to partnering with companies, including rival operators, to increase opportunities to grow revenue with new services that run over its network.

Dongmyun Lee, EVP, told Mobile World Live that revenue from users has plateaued despite the growing consumption of mobile data. “From the business side, the basic challenge is the cost versus revenue issue,” he noted.

As a result, Lee said KT needs to find new services that generate revenue while benefiting users, “so both can find a way to support each other”.

As KT is the largest fixed operator in South Korea, as well as the mobile number-two, Lee said it can provide services that “go beyond the traditional telecommunications services”.

And with plans to provide mobile data with theoretical peak speeds in excess of 200Mb/s, Lee said KT will be able to offer “convergence services” around energy, media, care and security.

“We don’t want to solve that problem in terms of competition in the network business alone. We’d like to create new businesses over our network so we can enlarge the pie of the market so we can solve the basic problem,” Lee said.

However, Lee admitted that these kinds of services are a new area.

“So we don’t think having competition at the initial phase is… very profitable, [it’s] not very desirable. So if needed we’d like to have very tight relationships, even with our competitors, to enlarge this market so that we can create a big market that will be a successor of our network market,” he said.

Turning to the potential to expand into markets outside of South Korea, Lee said the company would be interested in using its experience in deploying networks and services elsewhere.

“We’d like to leverage that expertise and try to use that knowledge to generate new businesses in other parts of the world. I think our network and the applications capabilities over that network will help in that area,” he said.

Watch the full interview here.