"GSM users can feel at home in Korea during 2002 FIFA World Cup Games."

SK Telecom, the leading Korean CDMA operator, and Telefonica Moviles Espana S.A.(TME), the leading Spanish GSM operator, have announced the successful commercial launching for CDMA-GSM inter-standard international roaming, backed by the GSM Association?s Global Roaming Forum (GGRF). The innovative idea has come from breakthroughs in wireless technology and a paradigm shift, which enables GSM subscribers to use their own SIM cards in the CDMA environment. The GGRF?s cooperation with Korean telecommunication operators recognizes that the 2002 FIFA World Cup is a great opportunity to drive the GSM-CDMA inter-standard roaming business. SK Telecom is also entering into twenty agreements in furtherance of inter-standard roaming in Korea; beginning with the momentous agreement recently executed with TME. The Spanish operator is working closely with SK Telecom to prepare hundreds of the intelligent CDMA phones (called IM-5200) in Spain for a convenient rental service, but the phones will also be available in Korea. This agreement will enable TME customers to have Roaming in Korea, especially on the occasion of 2002 FIFA World Cup. In addition, the Korean operator plans to provide special Customer Care services in English, Spanish, French and Chinese.

For inbound roaming to Korea, SK Telecom initially considered using customer-oriented roaming rather than a technology-driven solution since customer-oriented roaming involves the use of the current SIM card and a technological approach would involve the introduction of a new Removable-User Identity Module (R-UIM) card. Even though the R-UIM card is the standard method used for international CDMA roaming, SK Telecom felt that GSM customers might be reluctant to exchange their SIM cards for new R-UIM cards. Additionally, the introduction of R-UIM cards would consume a lot of time and effort. With the World Cup just around the corner, SK Telecom sought a different solution.
Eventually, SK Telecom decided to change its own systems to accept the current SIM cards. In order to use SIM cards in CDMA networks, SK Telecom had to overcome three obstacles. First, SK Telecom upgraded its CDMA networks to enable the reading and delivery of International Mobile Subscriber Identity(IMSI) information from GSM home networks, via a GSM-CDMA signaling conversion gateway at SK Telecom. Second, SK Telecom developed intelligent handsets that are compatible with the visiting GSM SIM cards, so all personal information such as telephone number is still available to the roaming client. Third, it set up a call data conversion system between TAP and CIBER, GSM call data format and CDMA call data format respectively.

Wonil Lim, vice president of SK Telecom, said: "Even though we are expanding inter-CDMA roaming rapidly in Asia-Pacific region, 70% of all cellular users belong to GSM technology. Moreover, Korea is hosting the 2002 FIFA World Cup event in the coming months and the visitors are mostly from GSM countries. Therefore, GSM-CDMA inter-standard roaming is a must for them and will bring more revenue generation and customer satisfaction to both GSM and CDMA worlds. We really appreciate this great achievement by GGRF, TME and coming GSM operators, that hopefully will follow soon this initiative. We will continue to actively contribute to the GGRF so that subscribers can one day use a single handset which provides two different technologies, GSM and CDMA, and brings more usage expansion."

Javier Aguilera, Chief Executive Officer of Telefonica Moviles Espana, said: "We are delighted to be part of this achievement, and will be working closely with SK Telecom to maximise the potential of this development, and to develop personalised customer care services. We would like to express our thanks to the GGRF and the GSM Association for its dedicated technical support and commercial research, and we look forward to further innovations in 2002."

" The GSM Global Roaming Forum is essential to the development of inter-standard roaming. It is gratifying for the GSM Association that the Roaming Forum was the catalyst for this wireless industry first," said Rob Conway, Chief Executive Officer of the GSM Association. "We welcome this positive development - it’s good news for our members, their consumers and for the industry at large."

* Notes for Editors:
About SK Telecom Co., Ltd.
SK Telecom is the leading mobile operator in South Korea with over 15 million subscribers and coverage of 99.75% of the population over CDMA networks (out of a total population of 45 million inhabitants). SK Telecom successfully commercialised the world?s first CDMA cellular phone service on January 1st, 1996 and IS-95B service on August 16th, 1996. The company also launched CDMA2000 1x service on October 1st, 2000. Now that SK Telecom is introducing the world?s first commercial 1x EV-DO service(CDMA 3G service), the company has greatly strengthened its global competitiveness in CDMA cellular phone technology. The transmitting speed of 1x EV-DO service that SK Telecom introduced for the first time in the world is a maximum 2.4 Mbps. In addition, since having got W-CDMA license in December 2000, SK Telecom has been preparing for a commercial W-CDMA 3G service in 2003.
SK Telecom:

About Telefonica Moviles Espana S.A.
Telefonica Moviles Espana (TME), the Spanish subsidiary of Telefonica Moviles Group, currently has more than 17 million active clients and is the leader of the Spanih mobile market, where the penetration reaches 71.5% of the population. The Company offers services for GSM 900/1800 and GPRS and is well known as a technology leader. Actually, it was the first telecom operator offering roaming services for prepaid customers and launching GPRS services with nationwide coverage. Last year, in the contest to obtain an UMTS license in Spain, Telefonica Moviles Espana was the best qualified company. Telefonica Moviles Group (NYSE:TEM), the parent company, is one of the world?s leading mobile telephony companies, with more than 30 million active clients under management, with a presence in 14 countries with technologies such as TDMA, CDMA, GSM and UMTS (Spain, Germany, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, Morocco, Brazil, Mexico, Argentina, Peru, Guatemala, El Salvador, Puerto Rico, Chile) and a potential market of 434 million inhabitants.

About the GSM Global Roaming Forum
The GSM Global Roaming Forum provides a collaborative and non-competitive opportunity for the discussion and development of technical requirements and commercial standards for roaming between GSM and other wireless technologies. In addition to its GSM-CDMA work, the GGRF has also fostered the development of GSM-TDMA and GSM-iDEN interoperability. GSM-iDEN has been in commercial operation since April 2000 and GSM-TDMA interoperability was launched in February 2002.

About the GSM Association
The GSM Association is the world’s leading wireless industry representative body, consisting of more than 574 second and third generation wireless network operators and key manufacturers and suppliers to the wireless industry. Membership of the Association spans 172 countries of the world. The GSM Association is responsible for the development and evolution of the GSM Family of wireless communications (GSM, GPRS, EDGE, and 3GSM) for digital wireless communications. The Association’s members provide digital GSM wireless services to more than 625 million customers (end November 2001). The GSM Platform accounts for approximately 70 percent of the total digital cellular wireless market. GSM is a registered trademark, registered and owned by the GSM Association

For more information, please contact:
Simon Jang
Title: Manager
Phone: + 82 2 2121 2456
Fax: + 82 2 2121 3993
E-mail: ssjang@sktelecom.com