On April 6th, SK Telecom announced the launch of a Phone CCTV service that lets customers remotely monitor any activity inside their houses or offices, through their cellular phones. The phone is connected through the high-speed Internet to a streaming video camera installed in their house or office. This service informs customers through a text message on their cellular phones, when any forced entry, or other unusual circumstance occurs. The cost of a streaming video camera ranges from twenty to thirty thousand won. This service is available to anyone who uses a 256 color supporting handset.

If a customer sets the streaming video camera on monitoring mode before going out, the camera will immediately inform the customer through a text message on their cellular phones, when any forced entry occurs. Upon receiving the message, the customer can monitor the house or office by connecting to the NATE service on their cellular phone. The streaming video will be automatically stored in their PC so it can be used as evidence of home or office damage when dealing with the police, an insurance company, or security guard service firm.

The Phone CCTV service was developed through a joint one year research and development effort by SK Telecom and IDEEBANK (www.ideebank.co.kr). An IDEEBANK official stated that customers no longer have to worry about security matters in their houses or offices. This excellent Phone CCTV service can give great peace of mind at a very low cost. This service will also be valuable to such facilities as hospitals or nursery schools, in the future.

Customers can subscribe to the service on the Nate.com site (http://phonecctv.nate.com), and use it by connecting to the Internet NATE menu (6. Friend Searching/Traffic/ Location ? My Security/Zone ? Phone CCTV). The information use fee (900 won for watching a stored streaming video, and 300 won for watching a current streaming video) will be charge in addition to the regular call rate.