TMCnews Featured Article

Two tech phenomenons broke the 10 million user barrier this week: Google (News - Alert)+ and VoIP usage in South Korea.

Google+ has been around for a couple weeks or so. VoIP’s been in South Korea since... well, a bit longer than that. Like, about five years, five months and two weeks longer. And to be fair, we’re counting Google+ worldwide membership. Still seemed like a cool coincidence.

According to the Korea Communications Commission, cited in the journal JoongAng Daily, the number of Internet telephony subscribers broke the 10 million mark at the end of last month. The service was introduced in Korea in 2006.

In the Korean market Internet telephony rates are 80 percent cheaper for intercity calls, 20 percent lower for calls to mobile phones and 95 percent cheaper for international calls, JoongAng reports, adding tha,  “it took Internet telephony some time to catch on. After all, it took just a year and four months for the number of smartphone subscribers to surpass 10 million in Korea.”

VoIP was given a major boost in 2008, when the Korean government announced that Internet telephony customers would no longer have to change their phone numbers. “Internet telephony is now Koreans’ daily communications medium,” the KCC said in a statement, adding that it expects the number of subscribers to reach 11 million by the end of the year.