KT Freetel Co., Ltd. (Korea Telecom Freetel, Korean: 주식회사케이티프리텔) was a South Korean telecommunications firm, now merged into Korea Telecom, specializing in cellular, or mobile, phones. Since 1999, it has also developed extensive overseas operations. The company is credited with developing customized ring back tones. On 1 June 2009, KTF was merged with KT.
In 2003, KTF received an order from PT Mobile-8 Telecom of Indonesia for a comprehensive consulting service. KTF also signed a contract for the export of its CDMA network management system and invested $10 million in the Indonesian mobile provider.
KTF commercialized the world first nationwide HSDPA service with the brand of "SHOW" on 1 March 2007.
In India, the firm completed the first stage of its contract with Reliance for $2.65 million worth of the CDMA network construction.
KTF also holds a 25% stake in CEC Mobile of China, after investing a sum of 4.5 billion won in 2002. The two major shareholders of KTF are KT(52.99%) and NTT DoCoMo (10.03%). KTF sponsors a professional StarCraft team.
Merged into KT
editKT officially declared the merger on January 14 2009.[citation needed] KFTC approved merge on February 25, 2009.[citation needed] The Korea Communications Commission finally approved the merger on Mar 18 2009.[citation needed]
A special meeting of shareholders was held on Mar 27 2009.[citation needed] KT finished the merge on May 31, 2009.[citation needed]