South Korea's highly-wired cities will be the arena for a multi-billion dollar battle between next-generation broadband wireless internet services this year.

Wireless data services offering theoretical speeds in excess of 10Mbps are on target for roll out in the country's capital of Seoul this spring, according to analysts.

If the plans succeed, Seoul residents will be the first in the world to sample both WiMax and HSDPA services.

Korean electronics manufacturers believe that their early experience with the new standards will give them an advantage in foreign markets, including the US and Europe.

Samsung is working on field trials of mobile WiMax with BT, Sprint and other telecoms operators, analysts say. The electronics manufacturer demonstrated smartphones and notebooks supporting HSDPA and mobile WiMax at CES this month.
Korea Telecom trialled a prototype of its WiBro (wireless broadband) system at an international summit last year, and plans to cover the entire city of Seoul by the end of 2006.

WiBro will conform to the new 802.16e standard, a mobile version of WiMax designed to cope better with moving users.

SK Telecom said that it will begin converting its existing mobile phone network to provide HSDPA by the end of the year, according to the Joong Ang Daily. 

HSDPA is an upgrade which provides very high speed downloads on existing W-CDMA voice and data networks, and can work with existing base stations. WiBro, like WiMax, is a completely new standard.

In early tests, both WiBro and HSDPA have demonstrated range measured in kilometres and actual download speeds of around 1Mbps, although theoretical peak speeds for both systems are at least 20 times higher.