SK Telecom will work with the car-sharing company on connected car services
Korean telecommunications company SK Telecom has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with compatriot car-sharing company SOCAR,to cooperate in the connected car business.
Under the terms of the agreement, SK Telecom and SOCAR will collaboratively develop and launch an innovative connected car service to enhance user experience in the era of IoT. SK Telecom will provide SOCAR with its in-car infotainment device installed with the T Map platform, and the cars will be connected via SK Telecom’s IoT network ‘LTE-M.’
The telco said that the connected car service will go through a pilot test during the last months of this year and is expected to launch in the first half of 2017.
“Through cooperation with SOCAR, SK Telecom successfully expands its IoT infrastructure and platform to the car sharing business,” said Kim Young-joo, SVP and Head of Enterprise Business Office of SK Telecom. “We will work closely with SOCAR to develop and provide more advanced connected car services.”
The Korean telco completed the nationwide rollout of the two IoT-dedicated networks, namely LTE-M (as of March 2016) and LoRaWAN (as of June 2016) to support the provision of IoT services. SK Telecom’s LoRaWAN network covers 99% of the country’s population.
With the support of the LTE-M network, the car sharing service users will be able to remotely control the car in real-time with no delay via their smartphones, and the car will be connected to the control center to send and receive information.
SK Telecom said it ended the second quarter of 2016 with 20 million subscribers in the 4G LTE segment, surging 11.7% compared to the same quarter the previous year.
The carrier launched LTE service in July 2011, commercialized 150 megabits per second updates in June 2013, and 225 Mbps LTE-Advanced services in June 2014 through carrier aggregation. The telco more recently launched 300 Mbps tri-band LTE-A capabilities in mid-2015.
