Mobile Phone Subscribers in North Korea Hit 70,000！

North Korea is a secretive country to most of us because people could not get information about North Korea direct from North Koreans.And what we get now is mostly information from agents.Recently I found an interesting report that North Koreans have got the right to own mobile phones.That's really interesting.

Here's the exact report I found! Hope you'd like it!

Demand for mobile phones in the secretive North Korea has continued to remain strong, with the sole mobile network in the country, koryolink reporting that its subscriber base had reached 69,261 at the end of September. It is presumed that the subscriber base would have passed the 70,000 mark by the end of October.

Koryolink is majority owned by Eygpt's Orascom Telecom.

koryolink established many precedents: the first of its kind Call Center was established to cater for customers' needs through highly trained bi-lingual agents. Additionally, despite the conservative nature of North Korea and the almost non-existent marketing and advertising industries, koryolink's launch was advertised in major newspapers and radio. koryolink also managed to avail different BTL materials (flyers, posters, danglers) to create awareness and for customer education.

In the 9 months ending September 30, 2009 koryolink reported revenues of US$18.5 as one of the handful joint venture companies in a strictly controlled socialist country. Over the same period koryolink reported an EBITDA of US$10 million with a margin of 54%.

In its focus on network roll-out and network quality improvement koryolink has invested a total of US$25 million in the nine months to September 2009. Currently, network roll-out to extend coverage to the whole country is in progress.

koryolink's retail network has started off with just the one centralized sales shop. However, by end of Q3, there are now three sales shops for selling the SIM card connection. Also capitalizing on the cooperation with the local partner Korea Post & Telecommunication Corp. (KPTC), 9 post office outlets where added to koryolink's indirect sales network for selling Scratch Cards in different locations with an aim of reaching customers' in different populated areas of Pyongyang. More indirect sales outlets will follow with the future expansion of network coverage in other cities.

I wish North Korea will be much more opener to the world and become a prosperous country.People there are really miserable and we should offer them some donations to help them.