The folks out at KT Corp. (News - Alert) are banking on content to bring life – and revenue – back to their network. And the particular class of content KT Corp. is looking to makes perfect sense, given the region: K-pop.

K-pop, for those not familiar with the term, is short for Korean pop music, a particularly unique brand of generally bubbly tunes that have struck a chord, no pun intended, with listeners the world over. KT Corp.'s plan is to offer not only an online streaming service geared toward K-pop, but also use its joint venture video platform as a venue for live concert broadcasts of big names in K-pop.

Many mobile providers have been looking to content as a way to shore up falling revenues, hoping to reverse their fate of being cast as “dumb pipes”, in which people use a mobile phone provider only as a conduit to find other people's content venues, be they downloaded applications or web browser-based installations. This has left mobile providers – indeed, Internet service providers in general – in something of a quandary, namely, how to keep people on their own network and viewing their own advertising which they can sell to boost their own revenues instead of just serving as an access point for other people's networks, advertising, and revenue jumps.

KT's leadership, therefore, is looking to not only music and video, but also games, apps, and similar online goods to market and keep their users in place and spending money. Just last year, KT put $3 million in a majority stake of Ustream Korea, the Korean arm of Ustream (News - Alert), which allows them to put on those shows in question, and has been in regular talks with Japanese and Chinese mobile operators to bring their own version of iTunes, heavy on the K-pop, to the networks in those countries as well.

But the problem with that comes in the form of consumer choice. The popularity of Samsung's (News - Alert) smart TV systems in Korea, for example, reportedly lead to a point where KT suspended fixed-line access for them for a period in February, citing excessive traffic.

This is a divisive and difficult issue that won't be going away any time soon, but as more people turn to the Internet for content, and thus shape the next generation of home entertainment, more issues like these will break out. And chances are, the battles between media and network platforms will prove to be every bit as involved as the content they provide.