South Korea’s telecom giant KT Corp. partnered up with a German communications equipment company to tap deeper into the European wireless infrastructure market and make headway in the transition to next-generation mobile service.

KT said on Thursday that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) for strategic partnership with Germany-based communications equipment and solution provider albis-elcon system Germany GmbH. Albis-elcon, which has corporate offices in 10 countries including Germany, has supplied more than 13 million systems and equipment to about 100 mobile companies from 40 different countries including Deutsche Telekom AG and Telefonica S.A.

KT is hoping the latest partnership will allow the company to expand presence in Europe by introducing its Giga solutions such as GiGA Wire and GiGA WiFi. GiGA Wire is a technology developed in 2014 that realizes GiGa-level Internet speed using existing copper wire and without optical fiber cable. More than 200,000 circuits have been installed in Korea so far and the technology has been exported to Thailand and Malaysia.

An unnamed official from KT said that there are many old buildings in Europe, which makes it difficult to install optical fiber cables. This provides opportunity for the company to expand its presence by offering its GiGa Wire technology. The official also added that KT plans to promote joint operations with albis-elcon with an aim to raise 100 billion won or more sales by exporting GiGa WiFi Home technology in the global market by 2020.

KT and albis-elcon also plan to promote joint projects in other areas including 5G network solution, platform business such as energy and security, and artificial intelligence.

The KT official said that the latest partnership has established a new bridgehead for the company to advance into the global market. It will strive to create synergy in platform, 5G, AI and other sectors.

By Seo Dong-cheol and Lee Eun-joo

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