KT Corp., South Korea’s leading fixed-line telephony and broadband Internet service provider, said it has bought two Uzbek communications operators to establish a bridge into the Central Asian market.

KT said in a press release that it had acquired a 51 per cent stake in East Telecom and a 60 per cent stake in Super-iMAX. KT declined to unveil how much it spent to buy the two operators but some sources say that the takeovers cost the company around 20 billion won (US$22.07 million).

East Telecom is a major fixed-line operator in Uzbekistan with its annual sales expected to reach US$11 million this year. Super-iMax is a relatively new wireless Internet service provider, the company said.

By using their Internet infrastructures, KT said that it plans to provide a high-speed Internet service in 12 Uzbek cities starting next year.

Uzbekistan is the most populous country in the Central Asian region with 26.5 million people. With only 60,000 Internet users, it offers high growth potential for advanced communications services.

KT said its acquisition of the two local communications firms will help it penetrate central Asia’s untapped communications market of 65 million people.

KT is the leader in the fixed-line and wireless Internet market in South Korea. It launched the world’s first commercial service of WiBro or wireless broadband in June last year.

With the recent global recognition of the homegrown technology as the third-generation communications standard, the South Korean company has been working hard to take WiBro overseas especially to infrastructure-poor countries since it costs less to build wireless communications networks than fixed-line systems.