Sky Dayton Takes Over SK Earthlink
The idea behind Earthlink and SK Telecom’s joint venture, SK Earthlink sounds extremely promising in helping to push the US mobile operator market forward. They could, obviously, screw things up — but if they can actually execute on the plan they’ve laid out, it would be a good thing for the entire industry. With that in mind, it’s interesting to see that Earthlink founder, Sky Dayton, who has spent the past few years running WiFi hotspot aggregator Boingo, has jumped ship to run SK Earthlink, instead. The interview with that link doesn’t give very much insight at all into the plans (the answers are extremely vague, actually). However, with Dayton at the helm, you can be assured the offering will get plenty of publicity. Hopefully they can come up with some really useful applications. It’s a little worrisome that the entirety of the plan they keep describing is simply “bring stuff over from Korea and offer it here.” While there are good reasons to do that, it’s worth realizing that the two markets are not identical — and different solutions may be needed to really catch on here.
