South Korea gearing up to debut cutting-edge technologies for “ICT Olympics”

Dec 21, 2017, 09:00 am

By AsiaToday reporter Kim Min-seok

With 50 days until the PyeongChang Winter Olympic Games, the government and companies are working hard to make the Olympic Games an opportunity to promote South Korea's ICT technologies related services overseas. Especially, they are hoping to showcase fifth-generation (5G) network successfully during the Olympics to take the lead in the global communication technology market.

The Seoul government and private companies are making efforts to showcase 5G trial service and related contents during the Winter Olympics by running ICT Experience Halls and strengthening promotional activities, according to industry sources on Wednesday.

The Ministry of Science, Technology and Communication, the department responsible for ICT, plans to showcase various next-generation contents, such as the world's first 5G pilot service, artificial intelligence (AI), and virtual reality (VR) at the Olympics in order to take the lead in the ICT sector. ICT Minister Yoo Young-min recently visited the PyeongChang ICT Experience Hall, which exhibits 5G and related services, to check on the relevant technologies and experience the related technologies. The minister also introduced advanced ICT services to foreign envoys in Korea.

The most noticeable company in the private sector is KT, an official telecommunications partner of the Olympics. Its goal is to showcase its advanced 5G-based ICT services during the Olympics. It plans to provide an opportunity for people to experience 5G with Time Slice, Omni-Point View, 5G Bus, and more.

Such experiential services are difficult to implement in the current LTE communication system because of large data capacity. However, 5G network enables such services as it has a maximum speed of 20Gbps (gigabit per second), which is 40 to 50 times faster than the currently used LTE fourth-generation technology and processing capacities nearly 100 times larger.

In addition, traditional manufacturing companies such as Hyundai Motor and POSCO are contributing to the successful implementation of the ICT Olympics. Hyundai will showcase its future autonomous vehicles which have adopted the latest connected and next-generation hydrogen fuel cell technologies.

The carmaker will offer test drives during the Olympics and unveil state-of-the-art 5G-based connected technology that features of smart homes while driving, and monitors the health condition of drivers.

#South Korea #KT #ICT Olympics #PyeongChang Olympics #Hyundai Motor