KT has teamed up with 100 Korean and foreign companies, including Samsung Electronics, Nokia and China Mobile, to form the “GiGA IoT Alliance.”
KT held a ceremony to inaugurate the alliance at the GiGA IoT Business Cooperation Center in Bundang, south of Seoul, on Aug. 25. On hand at the event were representatives from member companies of the alliance and officials from the Gyeonggio Center for Creative Economy and Innovation (CCEI) and the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning.
The GiGA IoT Alliance will provide one-stop support ranging from the unearthing of start-up ideas related to the Internet of Things (IoT) to commercialization, and overseas market exploration.
CCEIs across the nation, private investors and incubators have so for supported ICT startups. It is the first time an alliance of private companies has been established to provide support to startups. The establishment of the alliance is designed to dominate the home IoT market that the nation’s three telecom providers have nurtured. Telecom providers have scrambled to nurture startups by introducing programs to support startups and opening IoT development platforms.
The alliance will serve as a hub to provide off- and online support to startups. The GiGA IoT Business Cooperation Center has an exhibition for displaying IoT products of member companies; each member company’s space for converging and developing IoT products; a verification room for scalability application through telecom providers from 177 countries; including Nokia and China Mobile; and a room to demonstrate IoT products. Any IoT developer can use all systems and equipment in place at the center free of charge. Some 20 experts will offer commercialization consulting services. Funds for commercialization will be made available from the Gyeonggi CCEI, KT’s companywide fund and venture capitals of cooperative companies.
Online “Do It Yourself” development platform and “IoT Makers” will be opened to extend a helping hand to anyone wanting to design simple IoT solutions. The IoT portal (gigaiot.olleh.com) will be a channel for developers to share IoT solutions, propose business projects, apply for educational programs and conduct community activities.
KT said it plans to make inroads into such industry and public sectors as smart cars and smart energy fields, surpassing the home IoT sector through the establishment of the alliance. KT aims at nurturing 10 and 100 IoT global success stories by the end of this and next year, respectively.
Yoon Gyeong-lim, head of KT Future Convergence Business Group, said, “The GiGA IoT Alliance has been established to invigorate the IoT business arena that needs to be combined with gadgets, software, network and other diverse technologies.”
Some 100 companies have already participated in the alliance, and more companies specializing in IoT are expected to join forces with the goal of creating global IoT success cases in the industry and public IoT sectors through collaboration, he added.
KT has become the first Korean telecom provider to commercialize its new, faster LTE service, dubbed GiGA by combining LTE tech with Wi-Fi connections.
Theoretically, the service will offer download speeds up to 1.17 gigabytes per second, which is 15 times faster than normal LTE connections and four times faster than tri-band LTE-Advanced (LTE-A).
Such advantages are more likely to allow KT to put the faster LTE technology into connected business systems as network stability is the key to power products and services within the IoT framework.
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