SK Telecom ups investment in Malaysian wireless operator

SEOUL, May 16 (Yonhap) -- South Korea's leading mobile carrier SK Telecom Co. said Monday that it has injected an additional 18 billion won (US$16.5 million) into a Malaysian provider of advanced wireless Internet service to further expand its presence there.
The latest investment in Packet One Networks (P1), a provider of the high-speed wireless broadband service called WiMAX, is aimed at expanding its coverage and subscriber base in the Southeast Asian country, SK Telecom said in a statement.
SK Telecom invested $100 million in the Petaling Jaya, Malaysia-based company, in July last year, seeking revenue growth outside the saturated Korean mobile market. The Korean company, which controls about half of the domestic wireless market, remains the second-largest shareholder in the Malaysian operator.
P1, which accounted for 7 percent of Malaysia's WiMAX market in 2010, posted $68 million in annual revenue and had 274,000 subscribers of the high-speed wireless broadband service last year.
The company aims to secure more than 1 million subscribers by the end of 2013, according to the statement, as Malaysia's broadband market is expected to grow threefold in the next two years.
ylee@yna.co.kr