SK Telecom expands smart home partnerships

SK Telecom’s smart home business division senior vice president Cho Young-hoon, right, poses with Kocom Vice President Ko Jin-ho after signing to a memorandum of understanding to cooperate in the smart home business at Golden Seoul hotel in western Seoul, Tuesday. / Courtesy of SK Telecom

By Yoon Sung-won

SK Telecom said Tuesday it will work with a leading home network company Kocom to boost the distribution of its smart home services.

With its partnerships with the nation’s three largest home network providers ― Hyundai Telecom, Commax and Kocom ― the telecom company expects to provide more than 50 percent of new homes with its smart home services by 2020.

“As Korea’s three largest home network companies have joined the smart home ecosystem that we have established through partnerships with other domestic businesses, we expect to boost smart home service distribution to the housing market,” SK Telecom’s smart home business division senior vice president Cho Young-hoon said in a statement.

“We will work to provide smart home services to more than 50 percent of newly-built houses by 2020.”

The telecom company said it has signed a memorandum of understanding with Kocom to cooperate in the smart home business. Under the agreement, the two companies will jointly develop intelligent home network systems and smart light-emitting diode lighting equipment.

The two companies plan to complete synchronizing their smart home platform and accelerating distribution of their smart home services starting in the latter half of this year.

“It is a pleasure to provide smart home services based on the Internet of Things technologies under the partnership with SK Telecom,” Kocom Vice President Ko Jin-ho said.

Kocom’s home network system connects diverse household devices from heating, lighting to remote metering and security to enable an integrated control. The two said they plan to provide an application that can easily manage and control the home network system functions as well as home appliances.

For starters, SK Telecom and Kocom will provide their intelligent home network system for 500 new houses in the Wirey new town in Gyeonggi Province that are scheduled to open in August.

Users will be able to turn the heating and cooling systems on and off and shift home appliances to a power-saving mode to reduce electricity consumption, the company said.