Iot Network Nationwide
SK Telecom said on May 19 that it will start creating the IoT industry ecosystem in earnest, building the nationwide IoT network early, developing IoT services and prepare pricing policies.
The company plans to complete an early establishment of the nationwide IoT network by June first. It will construct the IoT network at the IoT test bed in Daegu by the end of May first and then roll out the nationwide network to 99 percent of the population and 90 percent of the total land area by the end of the first half of the year. Moreover, it is preparing to introduce services using “LTE-M” technology, which provides IoT services via the existing commercial long term evolution (LTE) networks.
SK Telecom expects that many businesses will develop various new IoT network-based services. The company plans to seek out outstanding small and mid-size firms and startups by encouraging them to push into the IoT market, and actively expand the IoT industry ecosystem.
Considering the feature of the IoT network which offers low frequency and low capacity data at low prices, SK Telecom has selected three major sectors – remote metering, location tracing and monitoring systems – and will focus on developing related services.
The remote metering system is a service which measures and collect energy consumption data of utilities, including gas, water and electricity. The company has been already carrying out the pilot project of a two-way advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) for gas from last year and it plans to expand this service nationwide in June. It will also start the pilot project of the AMI for water in July.
SK Telecom plans to expand its partnerships with numerous companies in order to launch additional services, such as the AMI for electricity.
The location tracing system is a service which collects and manages location information of vehicles, persons, objects and movable assets. It can be used to make a person secure and manage industrial assets. The security service will be available to children aged 1 to 10 and the elderly with dementia in the second half of the year. SK Telecom will first introduce the service in the IoT test bed in Daegu and smart city in Busan.
The monitoring system is a service which controls and manages the condition and environment of manufacturing, public and commercial facilities. The solution allows businesses to preemptively optimize the equipment management and supervise the manufacturing environmental safety by monitoring their large production facilities. Starting with SK Hynix’s Wuxi plant in China in September, the service will be used in many companies.
In addition, SK Telecom said it would begin various pilot projects this year as it can be developed into numerous practical services, such as the monitoring system for weather and soil, environmental monitoring system for toxic substances including radon, controlling and managing system for street lamps, security lights and traffic lights around the country.
In particular, SK Telecom is considering a plan to provide circuits and modules at no charge when using the company’s IoT platform.