SK Telecom, South Korea’s largest mobile operator, has a war chest of over US$2 billion to invest in new areas of growth over the next five years to offset slowing growth in its domestic market, the operator’s new chief executive said today. According to a Reuters report, CEO Jung Man-won, who took up the role in January, says he has been given approval to spend a minimum of KWR3 trillion (US$2.2 billion). He said that SK would continue to look for overseas investment opportunities in the US and China, as well as invest in the operator’s converged next-generation network. “The comments indicate telecom operators are moving away from the money-consuming marketing competition at home to the global market,” Woori Investment & Securities analyst Stan Jung told Reuters.

According to Reuters, SK owns a small stake in China Unicom and has also invested in mobile content and other businesses in China. In the US, it is an investor in the country’s largest MVNO, Virgin Mobile USA, and has also been linked with struggling third-placed mobile operator, Sprint Nextel. In separate news, Ha Sung-min, president of SK’s mobile network operator business, told Reuters that the operator is currently in the process of testing Nokia phones for the local market. Rival operator KTF began shipping Nokia phones earlier this week, marking the first time that the world’s largest handset vendor has offered devices in the market since exiting South Korea in 2003.