The telecoms industry needs to collaborate to create global standards for the Internet of Things (IoT) to take off, said Chang-Gyu Hwang, chairman and CEO, KT Corp. “Telcos need to play a leading role to set effective standards.”
He said international IoT standards will help enterprises reduce development costs and make it easily to enter into new markets by keeping prices down.
According to KT Economic Management Institute, IoT technology is expected to create revenue of $19 trillion in the next ten years.
Hwang, a keynote speaker at the Mobile Asia Expo in Shanghai yesterday, said KT has built light and versatile giga-level platform, called GiGAtopia, which has sharply reduced the time for developing a new service from six month to two weeks.
He suggested building an "IoT Global Data Hub" for telcos to help solve social issues such as traffic, safety and environmental problems by sharing data collected from a variety of IoT sensors and devices in the long term.
The GSMA must take the initiative, he said. “We have a mission to create global connections beyond connectivity. But we must move this together for co-prosperity.”
China Mobile chairman Guohua Xi told the capacity crowd that the mobile internet is the new engine for national economic development in China. The build-out of the infrastructure is driving consumption and economic growth.
He said there are many unknown things about the mobile internet that haven’t been discovered. “Telcos need to find a ways to create new value. With voice, we have to delay the decline. For data we have to extend the peak, and for apps need to move up the value chain in VAS.”