Mobile phones in North Korea - Some North Koreans get better connected
Posted in: Mobile & Wireless at 13/02/2012 09:49
A North Korean professor apparently posted footage on YouTube last year boasting that his country was developing applications for the Android mobile-phone operating system. Ordinary North Koreans are more likely to be pining for a humble mobile phone of any sort, and now their chances of owning one are increasing. Smuggled mobiles have been used on Chinese networks near the border for years, but now business is booming for Koryolink, the North's only official cellular network, based in the capital, Pyongyang.
The service -- 75%-owned by Orascom, an Egyptian firm, and 25%-owned by the North Korean state -- has gone from 300,000 to 1m subscribers in 18 months. For a hermit kingdom whose rulers resent their subjects keeping closely in touch with each other, this is a remarkable development.
http://www.economist.com/node/21547295
