KT has announced future strategies to become a global convergence leader by chalking up 4 trillion won in overseas business by 2015

Kim Hong-jin, chief operating officer of KT Global & Enterprise, said on July 12 that KT, the country’s biggest fixed-line service operator, has its sights set on becoming a leading global company, projecting about 4 trillion won in annual overseas sales and global projects taking up 10 percent of its operations by 2015. 

Kim said, “Telecommuni-cations is a restricted field globally, so telecom providers are satisfied with their domestic market due to their tendency to be unwilling to give foreign businesses any access to their markets.” But KT has aggres-sively explored foreign markets against this convent-ional wisdom, so the Korean telecom provider has so far enjoyed an average annual growth rate of 9 percent since 2004, he noted. KT has strategic investments, establishment of ICT infrastru-cture, and voice & data services as mainstay businesses. The Korean telecom provider has so far invested $364 million in strategic investments in 14 countries and recouped $726 million, almost doubling their investments. 

KT designated 2015 as the first year for making a quantum leap in global business and outlined its top four strategies to post more than 3.9 trillion won in global business annually: Expanding its participation in stake investments of foreign companies; forging alliances with global telecom providers for joint ventures; securing capabilities through partnerships with global ICT firms; and commercializing its affiliates’ and cooperative SMEs’ capabilities and expertise. 

For the expansion of its participation in stake investments in foreign companies, he said, KT will create joint ventures with foreign partners or expand its business environs to other industries and neigh-boring countries by transferring KT’s strengths. By capitalizing on KT’s strengths in building telecommunications infrastru-cture and offering corporate solutions, KT will strive to make inroads into emerging markets. KT will make stake investments or forge strategic alliances with foreign telecom providers, depending on the outcomes of feasibility studies. 

KT will seek to transfer ICT total management, cloud, smart space, Machine-to-Machine, and other ICT capabilities. Kim said he believed this would inevitably take place, as there is much space for a global expansion and cloud, virtual goods, convergence, and global expansion are things the company will explore in the future.

KT plans to send about 1,000 of its own employees abroad and have another 1,000 employed at overseas offices by that time, he said.

Kim said KT has established four different regional organizations in Asia, Europe, the U.S., and Africa for the first time this year to match the needs of the particular regions.