Strategic Partnership Agreement (SCFA) to last until 2022, 6th SCFA General Assembly held in Busan on the 14th
Promoting cooperation in 5G technology for the 2018 Pyeongchang, 2020 Tokyo, and 2022 Beijing Olympics

South Korea's leading telecommunications company KT will continue to strengthen its ICT leadership in Northeast Asia in the 5G era through continued cooperation with China Mobile and Japan's NTT Docomo.

KT announced at the 6th General Assembly of the Strategic Cooperation Framework Agreement (SCFA) held in Busan on the 14th that it will extend the strategic partnership between KT, China Mobile, and NTT Docomo for 5 years and strengthen 5G cooperation.

The signing ceremony for the extension of the Strategic Cooperation Agreement (SCFA) between the three companies, held on the 14th at the Westin Chosun Hotel in Haeundae-gu, Busan, was attended by the CEOs of the three companies, including KT Chairman Hwang Chang-gyu, China Mobile Chairman Shang Bing, and NTT Docomo President Kazuhiro Yoshizawa. This extension will lay the foundation for solidifying the mid- to long-term cooperative relationship between the three companies until 2022, five years after the expiration of the existing agreement in January 2017.

Established in 2011 under the leadership of KT, SCFA is the largest strategic consultative body among telecommunications operators in Asia. KT, China Mobile, and NTT Docomo, representing the three Northeast Asian countries, have been actively collaborating in network technology, roaming, app/content, IoT, and marketing for the past five years.

There are also quite a few concrete achievements. In the first half of 2016, an agreement was reached on the 5G frequency and standardization schedule, and in 2015, an agreement was reached to commercialize VoLTE roaming among the three companies, and the world's first demonstration of automatic roaming of the next-generation Wi-Fi (Wi-Fi NGH-Next Generation Hotspot) among the three companies was successfully completed. Based on the SCFA collaboration, KT is the only domestic telecommunications company to provide LTE data roaming and Wi-Fi automatic roaming services in the three countries of Korea, China, and Japan.

In 2015, a 5G TFT was established within SCFA at the suggestion of Chairman Hwang Chang-gyu, and the three companies jointly announced the '5G Cooperation Joint Declaration'. The main contents of the '5G Cooperation Joint Declaration' include ▲sharing a 5G vision and roadmap specialized for the Asian market ▲joint verification of key 5G technologies and systems ▲cooperative activities with global organizations to lead global 5G standards ▲continuous collaboration to discover new 5G services and markets, etc.

As the SCFA continues until 2022, the three telecommunications companies in Korea, China, and Japan are expected to provide more differentiated benefits to their combined 900 million subscribers through extensive collaboration from technology to marketing. Above all, they plan to actively utilize the “Olympic special” leading up to the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympics, and the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics to further strengthen their ICT leadership in Northeast Asia, including 5G.

KT, the telecommunications company hosting the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, is preparing the world's first 5G pilot service at the 2018 Olympics, while NTT Docomo is preparing for the Tokyo Summer Olympics and China Mobile is preparing for the Beijing Winter Olympics. At this general meeting, KT attracted attention by exhibiting various 5G technologies that will be introduced at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.

At the 6th SCFA General Assembly, the results of collaboration and strategic direction were shared and discussed by five divisions: 5G, IoT, roaming, app content, and marketing. In addition, KT explained the 'Big Data Joint Task for Preventing the Spread of Infectious Diseases' proposed at the UN Global Compact (UNGC) General Assembly last June, and proposed cooperation between the three major telecommunications companies of Korea, China, and Japan as the initial stage of establishing a big data-based infectious disease prevention system.

KT Chairman Hwang Chang-gyu said, “The five-year extension of cooperation among the three companies, Korea, China, and Japan, is an opportunity for SCFA, which has established itself as the largest telecommunications association in Northeast Asia, to take another leap forward,” and emphasized, “The partnership with China Mobile and NTT Docomo will go beyond providing excellent services to customers, and through 5G cooperation, we will solidify Northeast Asia’s global ICT leadership.”