Outdoor leisure gets more exciting with 5G thrills in South Korea

SEOUL — Telecom service provider KT has taken over Surfyy Beach, a rising surfers’ beach party area in Yangyang, Gangwon Province, with various activities related to 5G services for 10 days from Friday to Aug. 18.

The first thing visitors can see is a banner “KT 5G 5WAG,” written so that the number 5 in the last word looks like the alphabet “S.” The words are emblazoned across a giant screen installed at the entrance to the beach, which livestreams footage of jet surfer riding the waves wearing KT’s 360 degrees neckband camera called Real 360.

Next to the screen is KT’s 5G experience zone, and KT ON Restaurant where a robot serves free shaved ice.

Ranging from a zip line ride, Super VR goggles that play horror films and an icy liquid-nitrogen cryotherapy tank, KT has prepared summer specific events to bring the 5G network closer to people’s lives.


“Work-life balance has become an important facet of modern life since the adoption of the 52-hour workweek regulation in South Korea,” said Kim Won-Kyung, senior managing director at KT, at a press event held in Gangwon Province on Friday.

KT’s initiatives are driven by the outdoor activities market here, which has been growing steadily at an annual average of 7 percent over the past few years, he added.


“More millennials want to enjoy special, extreme sports, and share their adventures with friends via social media in a faster, easier way,” Kim said. To meet their needs, KT is attempting to expand its 5G services to a variety of outdoor activity spots.

“People are not yet familiar with 5G services. The industry’s claims about the hyperspeed connections come off as way too technical and irrelevant to everyday life,” said Sung Eun-mi, KT’s VP of 5G services.

“So what value can the 5G technology really offer? To show this we focused on the marriage of dynamic leisure activities and low-latency services,” Sung said.

It has been around 130 days since KT first launched its next-generation 5G services in Korea.

Starting Sept. 1, KT will open 5G Activity Shops in Gangwon Province, Gyeonggi Province, North Chungcheong Province, Ganghwa Island and Jeju Island, where it will freely distribute Real 360 cameras and 5G devices for users to try out while surfing, going on a zip line, riding ATV bike, para gliding, riding on luge, alpine coaster and cart riding.


In a bid to draw more subscribers to the service, the firm is planning to roll out more cultural events across the nation in 2020 paired with 5G broadcasting.

Meanwhile, back on Surfyy Beach, those who complete four quests, such as downloading KT’s 5G karaoke app, get a chance to try out cryotherapy on the beach for free. After spending two minutes in the freezing minus 145 degrees Celsius of liquid-nitrogen tank you wish to rush back under the scorching sun.

Visitors who upload a photo taken from the 5G experience zone including the “stairway to heaven,” a short flight of 10 stairs ending at a red frame against the sky in the shape of Samsung’s latest Galaxy Note 10, are rewarded with a free shaved ice served by a robot at KT’s ON Restaurant temporarily opened at the Corona Sunset Bar at Surfyy Beach.

The telecom firm’s domestic rivals — SK Telecom and Uplus — are also rushing to increase user exposure to 5G services. SKT is operating 5G virtual reality and augmented reality activities at Busan’s Haeundae Beach, Jeju’s Hamdeok Beach, Boryung’s Daecheon Beach and Donghae’s Mangsang Beach.

LG Uplus, on the other hand, has opened U+ 5G halls at Megabox movie cinemas in Coex, World Cup Stadium and Hanam Starfield Mall, where it offers people exclusive virtual overseas travel experience.

source: technology.inquirer.net

Korea officially launches 5G service via Samsung phone

SEOUL — To mark the official launch of the fifth-generation of mobile network, South Korean mobile carriers held various celebrations over the weekend, and vowed to aggressively expand their 5G infrastructure across the country in preparation for launch on smartphones in March, according to the telcos on Sunday. SK Telecom CEO Park Jung-ho made a video call from the mobile operator’s network control center in Bundang, Gyeonggi Province to a staff manager in the company’s Myeong-dong office in central Seoul, using a pilot 5G smartphone made by Samsung Electronics. “I feel deeply moved by this first video call on a 5G smartphone,” Park said. “It was much clearer than on LTE and the response was quick.”

Calls were subsequently made to Haeundae in Busan, Dunsan-dong in Daejeon and Geumnam-ro in Gwangju, some of the 13 cities and counties that are covered by SKT’s 5G network. SKT’s first 5G client Myunghwa Ind kick-started the 5G-AI machine vision solution that that collects and sends 24 high-definition photos from the production line to a cloud server, where they are judged for defects via artificially intelligent algorithms.The mobile carrier’s self-driving car had test-runs in Hwaseong K-City and ordinary roads in Siheung as it was communicating with SKT’s 5G control center. Despite a fire from its branch in northern district in Seoul and subsequent network blackout last week, KT also celebrated its commercial 5G launch at the 123-floor Lotte World Tower in Jamsil, southern Seoul. The tower’s guide robot Lota is the first client of KT’s 5G service that provides 10 gigabytes of data at 49,500 won ($44.20) per month.“We chose Lota as our first 5G client in order to highlight that 5G doesn’t just mean a replacement of the mobile network,” a company official said. “5G robot Lota will be a platform that innovates our daily lives and industries altogether.” KT said it has deployed 5G infrastructure in Seoul and six other metropolitan cities across the country. The KT network even covers Jeju, Ulleungdo and Dokdo.

The mobile carrier plans to expand the coverage to 24 major cities, including subway and bullet train KTX stations with large floating populations. LG Uplus also held a video call ceremony in Magok, northwestern Seoul, using a laptop that is connected to a 5G router. The third player in the Korean telecom market has established around 4,100 5G base stations – the largest number so far among the three telcos – and plans to set up more than 7,000 stations by the end of December, the company said. LG Uplus is the only carrier that has deployed China’s Huawei 5G equipment. LG’s first 5G client is tractor maker LS Mtron. The company has collaborated with LG Uplus to develop the country’s first 5G-enabled tractor that can be remotely controlled.

source: technology.inquirer.net