SKT BACKS ENTERPRISE AS CLOUD REVENUE DRIVER

INTERVIEW: SK Telecom (SKT) VP and head of 5GX Cloud Labs, Kang-won Lee (pictured), predicted the enterprise rather than the consumer segment will drive the first revenue-generating mobile edge compute use cases, as operators press ahead with cloud deployments.

During Mobile World Live (MWL)’s ‘Moving to a Future Software World’ Themed Week, Lee told MWL edge cloud deployments are still in “a very early stage”, with plenty of business development yet to be completed, particularly across the app and device ecosystems. But, “once the tipping point happens, then I think everybody will want to have these edge cloud capabilities”.

Lee pointed to potential applications across several verticals, including finance, healthcare and manufacturing, noting on-site mobile edge compute capabilities will help provide new experiences, while ensuring sensitive data including bank account or patient information is kept secure.

The executive said SKT is working on launching up to four enterprise use cases this year: “we will perhaps start seeing more and more applications develop early next year and there is a lot of opportunities there”.