|
|
 THE STAT 26Percentage of wireless customers who use their cell phones to take picturesMore Vitals
| |
JUNE 22, 2005
Sky Dayton's New Flight Plan EarthLink's founder explains how he'll bring cutting-edge wireless services to the U.S. with South Korean partner SK Telecom Sky Dayton has done his spell as the tech industry's wunderkind. He founded the Internet service provider EarthLink (ELNK ) in the 1990s when he was in his 20s. It became one of the most popular ISPs in the country and ultimately went public. EarthLink finished last year with more than $1.4 billion in revenues. Now at the ripe old age of 33, Dayton is moving on. He has become chief executive of a joint venture that EarthLink has formed with SK Telecom, a wireless player from South Korea. Funded with $440 million, half from each company, the venture will launch its wireless service in the U.S. early next year. The idea is that SK EarthLink (the name it's using until it unveils its own new brand) will bring the sophisticated wireless services now common in Korea to the U.S. market. That will include music, games, TV, video clips, and more. Dayton will use the networks of Sprint (FON ) and Verizon Wireless to deliver the services. Essentially, he'll buy capacity on their networks at wholesale costs and then resell service at retail rates. He plans to use phones similar to those available in Korea, with hard drives for storing tunes and TV programs as well as crystal-clear screens for baseball highlights or computer games. And he's developing complementary Web services to provide cutting-edge content. ALL-STAR ROSTER. SK EarthLink will make public some of the details of its new venture on June 22. The company will be headquartered in Los Angeles, not terribly surprising since that's where Dayton has been working with EarthLink. The announcement will also identify some of the members of the senior executive team. They'll include a number of top-flight names, from SK and mobile-phone maker Motorola (MOT ). Dr. Wonhee Sull, an SK executive responsible for launching many of its most advanced data services, will become the company's chief operating officer and move to California full-time. Stuart Redsun, formerly Motorola's worldwide brand marketing chief, will become executive vice-president for marketing at SK Earthlink. Todd Tappin, the former chief financial officer at search pioneer Overture, will become the venture's CFO. And Ali Zanjani, a sales exec from cable player Cox Communications, will join as executive vice-president for sales and distribution. Dayton recently stopped into BusinessWeek's offices on a trip to New York and talked about his new ventures. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation: Q: What's the game plan for your new company? A: We're basically taking all the technology from the hottest market in Asia and bringing it here. Q: Will it be similar to what European wireless operators offer? A: What we're going to roll out here, network wise, we think is going to be better than Europe. Q: You'll be using the networks of Sprint and Verizon to deliver wireless services. How will you distinguish yourselves? A: At the end of the day, it comes down to focus. We wake up every day thinking about how to serve this market. There's definitely some technology that SK has that nobody else has. But mostly it's focus and speed. We're going to come out with things before anyone else. Q: What kinds of services will we see on phones? Is TV going to be big? A: You'll see a lot of interesting things on phones. I'm not sure it makes sense to cram regular TV shows onto a phone. There's stuff that's going to be created specifically for the phone. Ultimately, that will be the killer app. Q: How about music? A: [Phones] will have enough memory to be a relevant MP3 player. In Korea, people don't have dedicated music players -- they have their phones, and their phones play music. Think about it. You carry your phone everywhere with you. You don't carry your iPod everywhere. Q: And games? A: Games are going to be huge. Q: So real innovation is possible in the telecom industry? A: I think it's possible to bring a cool, new vibe to an industry that has been dominated by some pretty monolithic companies.  Edited by Ira Sager
BW MALL
SPONSORED LINKS
Buy a link now!Get BusinessWeek directly on your desktop with our RSS feeds.  Add BusinessWeek news to your Web site with our headline feed. Click to buy an e-print or reprint of a BusinessWeek or BusinessWeek Online story or video. To subscribe online to BusinessWeek magazine, please click here. Learn more, go to the BusinessWeekOnline home page  | | |
 Copyright 2005, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.Terms of Use | Privacy Notice |
Printer-Friendly Version