[Yonhap Photo]
SEOUL -- Undeterred by a police investigation into its chief, South Korea's top telecom company KT Corp. vowed to push ahead with the development of a fifth-generation communication platform for autonomous vehicles.
The telecom company said Wednesday it would develop a commercialized autonomous vehicle platform called "5GaaVP", key technologies on 5G infrastructure, and an intelligent control tower system.
"In the era of autonomous vehicles, a car itself will become a communication device. So, the vehicles will be our customers," KT's Infra Laboratory vice president Jun Hong-bum said, adding KT would create a new ecology through it 5G-based autonomous platform.
In a bid to commercialize a 5G network and related technologies by 2020, KT carried out the test run of its 5G-connected autonomous buses at the venue of this year's Winter Olympics in the eastern ski resort of Pyeongchang.
KT said it would start operating 5G-connected autonomous buses next month in the country's autonomous vehicle cluster in Pangyo at the southern outskirts of Seoul.
The 5G network is vital for autonomous vehicles which are linked to a control server sending and receiving large data packets. It takes about one-thousandth of a second for a 5G-connected car to communicate with the control tower system.
To set up a nationwide 5G network, KT will use the 3.5GHz frequency which has a long coverage in urban areas. The company hopes car parts makers and local governments will participate in its project.
KT chairman Hwang Chang-gyu was sent home earlier in the day after an overnight investigation by police into allegations that executives purchased gift vouchers with company funds and cashed them out for private political donations to lawmakers on committees related to KT's business between 2014 and 2017.
reporter
Park Sae-jin
swatchsjp@ajunews.com
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