DAEGU < invest Korea

According to Yonhap News,

(SEOUL=Yonhap News) South Korea's two tech giants -- SK Telecom Co. and Samsung Electronics Co. -- will team up with a local city government to construct an Internet of Things (IoT) trial town, officials said Monday.

They plan to install the IoT infrastructure across Daegu, 300 kilometers southeast of Seoul, to be designated as a related regulation-free zone under the project.

The project will be focused on setting up IoT-based infrastructure for renewable energy, medical services and smart cars.

SK announced it will invest 90 billion won (US$76 million) by the end of this year to build a test bed for an IoT-only network.

Samsung will offer IoT devices and equipment and also support technology development.

Daegu City aims to secure more than one trillion won for the relevant budget.

"With the participation of South Korea's leading ICT firms, we have gained an opportunity to make Daegu position itself as a new hub of the ICT industry," Mayor Kwon Young-jin said. "We will endeavor to turn Daegu into South Korea's top venture complex through wholehearted administrative and financial support."

The IoT is a network of physical objects, including vehicles, buildings and electronic devices, connected to the Internet to exchange data. It allows such objects to be sensed and controlled remotely across the infrastructure.

Gartner Inc., a global technology research agency, estimates that IoT will support total services spending of $235 billion in 2016, up 22 percent from 2015.

South Korea's IoT market is expected to grow to 17 trillion in 2020 from 2.3 trillion won in 2013.

lcd@yna.co.kr

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