Things on Internet

KT announced on May 31 that its President Hwang Chang-kyu visited Nokia and Ericsson from May 28 to 29 (local time) and agreed to go into partnership for 5G tech.
KT announced on May 31 that its President Hwang Chang-kyu visited Nokia and Ericsson from May 28 to 29 (local time) and agreed to go into partnership for 5G tech.

 

KT's president is actively working to provide the Internet of Small Things service, accelerating preparations for related businesses. Hence, the industry is paying attention to whether or not KT will be able to make the Internet of Small Things business, which is specialized for quickly sending a small amount of data from electricity meters and health-related information, a future growth market.

According to industry sources on May 31, KT President Hwang Chang-kyu discussed cooperative measures for the ICT sector including the Internet of Small Things industry in a meeting with Axelle Lemaire, minister of state for digital technology, in Paris on May 27 (local time).

KT's president and the French minister reportedly discussed ways for the penetration of French company SigFox into Korea.

SigFox is receiving a lot of attention in the global communications industry, since it suggested the notion of the Internet of Small Things for the first time. In the past, the French company increased the response speed and stability for small-scale data transmission using unlicensed frequency bands. On top of that, it successfully commercialized much cheaper networks for the Internet of Small Things for the first time. SigFox explained that 8 million devices worldwide are connected to networks for the Internet of Small Things.

The French government is focusing on research and development in the IoT area and the cultivation of start-ups with an aim to take back its dominant position in the ICT market in line with its “Industriel” plan. The government is providing full support to SigFox under the strategy for global ICT market penetration. SigFox also recently discussed cooperative measures for the ICT sector with Samsung Electronics, increasing business partnerships with German-based mobile carrier T-Mobile, and others.

Industry analysts are saying that Hwang probably asked the French government to have a meeting with the minister. In fact, a senior executive in charge of marketing at SigFox reportedly visited KT's headquarters and met high-ranking officials in May.

Following France, the KT president visited Nokia and Ericsson on May 28 and 29, and discussed ways for cooperation in 5G tech and the construction of a test-bed.

To bring the commercialization of 5G closer, Hwang reached an agreement with the representative of Nokia to strengthen cooperation in virtualization-based Fiber to the Antenna (FTTA), a favored tech for 5G networks. Both companies also agreed on the joint development of mobile edge computing techniques to provide 5G services.

In his visit to Ericsson's headquarters, a tech jointly developed by KT and Ericsson was successfully demonstrated in a moving car for the first time. The technique is about simultaneous transmission between 5G base stations, based on broad band millimeter waves. The method will make it possible to drastically reduce blind spots by connecting a large number of small cells without interruption, thereby helping gb-level wireless services like hologram video communications go smoothly while driving.

The Korean and Swedish companies succeeded in delivering connection speeds of up to 2Gbps in a moving car in the demonstration, planning to increase the speed to more than dozens of Gbps in the future. In addition, Korea's second-largest mobile carrier signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Ericsson to develop and test LTE-M and IoT-related methods.

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