The ITU news magazine published its key theme of 'Accelerating ICT growth together' on cover. Korea IT Times releases the news clipping of the keynote speech from Dr. Lee Dong-myun, Senior Executive vice president of KT Corporation, South Korea during ITU Telecom world 2016.
The business benefits of providing ultra-fast Internet that 5G systems will help enable are clear — especially in developed markets. Perhaps nowhere is that more true than in the Republic of Korea, which ranked No. 1 in ITU’s ICT development Index for the second consecutive year.
While the telecom market globally is growing at a compound annual growth rate of 3–4 percent each year, the market is shrinking by 2–4 percent annually in developed markets, said Dr Lee Dong-myun, senior executive vice president of KT corporation during his keynote address on how 5G can drive growth in the “gigabit era.”
Providing gigabit speeds has allowed KT to attract far more customers and has led to a 24% increase in average revenue per user (ARPU) since the company launched its gigabit-speed service two years ago,
According to Dr. Lee. “5G is necessary for the new demands on data. It’s not a frivolous thing,” said Lee, who pointed out that KT has been aggressive in providing smart energy, safety, health, car, and next-generation media services to power a new “Giga IoT” era that will see these services converging in a “connected cloud” in which users will be connected to the data.
“The way forward is very clear: We must build the infrastructure. But the infrastructure alone will not solve the problem,” said Lee. “We must be able to use the data accumulating in the cloud structure. We really need to collaborate together to build the architectural frameworks for the whole end-to-end service.”
By the time the Republic of Korea hosts the Winter Olympic Games in 2018, KT plans to show off 5G capabilities, following test phases this year. It expects commercial deployment of 5G by 2019.
“We expect that when 5G comes, all mobile customers in the Republic of Korea will be able to enjoy gigabit speed wireless,” said Lee.