SK Telecom agrees to fund up to $270 Million into Helio
Posted by Greg Kumparak on September 21st, 2007 at 10:33 AM
(thanks for pointing this out, marco.polo)
Earthlink being in a joint venture with SK Telecom for Helio has its advantages. It gives Helio some swagger, you know? Gets’em some love from device manufacturers, and allows them to start off with a bit more foresight into the industry. Oh, and lots and lots of money.
Today, Earthlink confirmed that an agreement has been reached for SK Telecom to invest up to $270 million dollars into Helio. This should just about clear up any worries people had when speculation hit in June that Helio may be getting cut off.
270 million dollars is one heck of an investment, conveying SKTelecoms devotion to this venture. Feel free to invest 1/270th of that into my exotic-race-cars-and-cake fund, SKT!
We look forward to all the good stuff that will come of it over at the Helio House.
September 21st, 2007 at 12:39 pm
YEAAAAAAAA!!! WHOOOOOOOO!! GO HELIO!!!!!! AND SKT!!!!!!!
September 21st, 2007 at 1:38 pm
so with funding like this, will they be putting up more towers? and 3g networks? because i rarely even have service at my house
September 21st, 2007 at 2:12 pm
woo, does this mean faster and better improvements to our service?
September 21st, 2007 at 6:09 pm
Wow…Being a Helion myself, I love seeing this. Gives me some peace of mind. Helio…It’s the first successful MVNO.
September 21st, 2007 at 8:14 pm
Willie, Helio is an MVNO. We run primarily off of Sprint’s towers. We don’t control the network.
September 22nd, 2007 at 10:01 am
lets not forget the other part of this news release…Earthlink is completely backing out of it’s contract with Helio and is not pumping any more money into Helio. Earthlink predicts Helio will lose $320 million this year and those crafty folks at the Wall Street Journal confirm this. Dont believe me? Go to google and do a news search for Helio and you can see for yourself. Dont get me wrong, I love my Drift and hope Helio sticks around…but man they sound like a fish out of water lately and need to do some serious marketing or lowering of their subscriber prices. TMobile is about to start offering MySpace mobile and their monthly fees for usage is way cheaper than Helio’s. Come on Helio, open your eyes!
September 23rd, 2007 at 2:36 am
Luke, not yet we don’t
September 23rd, 2007 at 10:17 am
@your_mom
Earthlink doesn’t have an extra $270 mil just laying around. They’re a struggling company, who is trying to reinvent itself through city wide WiFi contracts (which aren’t exactly panning out). SKTelecom on the other hand, has lots and lots of money. And more importantly, they have lots and lots of interest in carving their niche into the U.S. wireless market. They could easily buyout Sprint if they so desired.
So, I wouldn’t take Earthlink not being able to dump another $270m after their proposed $100m a few months back as them “backing out” of Helio. Even if they do, SKT isn’t going to let this one go.
September 24th, 2007 at 1:59 pm
@Laci Mini
w00t!
September 27th, 2007 at 6:32 am
@Laci Mini
Symbol Price Change Mkt Cap
S 18.70 0.00 (0.00%) 53.23B
ELNK 8.02 0.00 (0.00%) 991.78M
SKM 29.40 0.00 (0.00%) 19.23B
It seems to me that 53.23 Billion is greater than 19.23 Billion. But what would I know about math, i’m just an engineer. Helio seriously is hemoraging money. I think there is a great potential for it to turn around but it will require focusing on more than just Niche markets. There is nto enough money out there to pay for the huge prices that Sprint charges for Helio to use its towers. Sprint is a huge company and the only wireless company bigger right now is Verizon. Unless Helio gets some extra provisions from Sprint for cheaper service, or all the great data services that Helio offers gets introduced elsewhere causing price drops, Helio isn’t going to make it with its current customer base. Don’t get me wrong, I love my Ocean. But I’m nto paying $2.99 a day or a month for stupid little applications or games. Other companies let to BUY applications and games. What a concept? Oh, and Helio needs to seriously work on their Operating systems too. My Ocean is so buggy it has to be restarted at least once a day. that’s not a good feature to a Niche market who generally uses their Cell Phone as their ONLY home phone. If I am in an emergency, I don’t have time to wait for the phone to unfreeze and decide to do what i tell it to do. And I think it wont get any better because helio is focusing on getting more and more phones out instead of fixing the problems with the ones that are out.
In Summary: I HOPE Helio makes it, because i love the service and the coverage. But I just don’t see it making it through my entire 2 year contract.
September 27th, 2007 at 8:29 pm
To look at it from a worst-case point of view, which is premature, but just hypothetically.. if Helio did fold, what would be the likelihood of possible reimbursement for the cost of the phone purchase? You buy the phone, then don’t even get the two years out of the contract you signed. Since that sort of a cell-company crash doesn’t happen often, at least in the U.S., is there any known legal precedent on that?