LG Uplus to build smart city complex in Goyang

By Yoon Sung-won

LG Uplus said Sunday it will establish a smart city infrastructure in Goyang, Gyeonggi Province, based on the Internet of Things (IoT) technologies.

The move comes as the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning has chosen the consortium of the nation’s third-largest telecom company and Goyang to establish a model complex of an IoT-based smart city.

Starting from the model complex in Goyang, LG Uplus pledged to speed up application of its smart city technology to other cities in the country.

“We will develop IoT-based converged services and work to solve pending issues in urban areas by tapping into our open smart city platform technologies,” LG Uplus’ IoT service division head Ahn Sung-joon said in a statement.

The telecom company and the ministry will open the public data it will collect from the project and share it with other regional government and businesses to prepare for similar projects.

“We will seek to build more IoT model complexes in Korea by cooperating with other regional governments, contributing to establish a nationwide ecosystem for IoT services.”

In the ministry’s IoT converged model complex project, a regional government is to cooperate with private businesses to deal with urban problems such as security, environment, energy and transport. Under the consortium with Goyang, LG Uplus will source diverse sensors and devices designed for public services and apply them to urban problems.

In particular, the consortium will concentrate on IoT services that can improve the lives of residents in Goyang.

For instance, the consortium will establish an intelligent parking system to tackle illegal parking problems in the Ilsan district and guide cars to nearby public parking lots.

More than 200 bus stops in Goyang will be equipped with environmental sensors that can detect fine dust, exhaust emissions and noise in the streets and provide the information through a mobile network. An automatic streetlamp control system will be built at the Ilsan Lake Park and turn the lights on and off by detecting nearby pedestrians, LG Uplus said.

The telecom company said it will open a model complex support center in Goyang by August and encourage IoT service providers to participate in the project.