SK Telecom plans to re-enter US market

Beijing time September 16 afternoon news, according to foreign media reports, South Korean mobile operator SK Telecom said in Monday that the company is in talks with hedge fund Harbinger Capital, the latter support of the new U.S. mobile operator LightSquared investment. "We are negotiating with Harbinger to determine the terms of the investment," a SK telecommunications spokesman said.　　"This investment shows that SK Telecom will again enter the U.S. market." SK Telecom withdrew from the US market in 2008 as part of its plan to divest its overseas assets by selling its beleaguered Helio mobile business to Virgin Mobile America (Virgin Mobile USA).　　SK Telecom also sold its 1.3 billion-dollar China Unicom shares to China Unicom in 2009. LightSquared plans to use LTE (Long-term evolution) technology to build an open wireless broadband network.　　Established US operators such as Verizon Wireless, at&t and MetroPCS also plan to support the 4G technology.　　LightSquared said in July this year that it would launch a network of 1.75 billion of billions of dollars in funding and plan to start a second round of financing in the next two years. Nokia Siemens Telecom will be supplying equipment to lightsquared this year, helping the company test network services in Baltimore, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Denver in the first half of 2011. (Ding Macro)