Free supply of chipsets/modules to partner companies starting in April
Plan to commercialize equipment and technology developed in-house at the Open Lab

LG Uplus held a business briefing at its Yongsan headquarters on the 21st ahead of the commercialization of NB-IoT (NarrowBand-Internet of Things).

This briefing session was held with the purpose of enhancing partners' understanding of the business and establishing the relevant ecosystem and market at an early stage by providing a venue to share business promotion strategies and partner support plans.

The event was attended by key LG Uplus executives involved in NB-IoT, including Executive Vice President Ahn Seong-jun, Head of the IoT Division, and Senior Vice President Kwon Jun-hyeok, Head of Industrial and Public IoT, as well as Huawei’s Vice President of Solution Sales Korea, Yefangcheng, who decided to provide 100,000 chipsets and modules to partner companies free of charge. Presentations followed, focusing on network interconnection technical support plans, business direction and service models, and case studies of overseas commercial operators.


▲ An LG Uplus employee explaining business strategy to partner company officials.

At the briefing, Ahn Seong-jun, Executive Vice President and Head of the IoT Division at LG Uplus, stated, “Base stations in the Seoul and metropolitan areas are currently ready to provide NB-IoT services once government administrative procedures are completed,” adding, “We will take the lead in creating a new ecosystem by securing seamless IoT coverage nationwide in the future.”

Huawei, a global network equipment company, has been supplying LTE wireless base station equipment to LG Uplus since 2013 and has also actively supported the development of technologies such as '4*4 MIMO' and '256 QAM'. In addition, an Open Lab was opened at the LG Uplus Sangam headquarters at the end of last year, and a cooperative relationship has been maintained for several years.

LG Uplus plans to hold a series of events, starting with a business briefing, followed by business contests and hackathons, to accelerate the early adoption of NB-IoT in Korea. Huawei stated that it will sequentially supply NB-IoT chipsets and modules to partner companies starting in April, when the commercialization of dedicated networks in Korea is expected, and will actively support the commercialization of ideas generated through open labs and contests.

NB-IoT is suitable for communicating with objects over long distances of more than 10km with low power consumption, so LG Uplus plans to utilize this technology to first promote pilot projects for city gas meter reading and water metering, and later provide services such as cargo tracking and logistics management.

The NB-IoT Open Lab plans to provide total care services, including support for testing personnel and sales channels from the planning stage, to enable partner companies—such as terminal, service solution, and system integrator firms—to verify their self-developed equipment and technologies through network interoperability testing and to commercialize them. A dedicated website will also be launched next month to allow partners to use the Open Lab more systematically and conveniently.