LIVE FROM HUAWEI MOBILE BROADBAND FORUM 2016, TOKYO: LG Uplus is exploring a number of monetisation options for its home IoT services, reflecting that as it began its work “there were not all that many reference models around the globe”.

The South Korean operator already has more than 500,000 subscribers for its IoT@home services, with more than 1 million devices connected – making it the number one provider in the market.

Ahn Sung Jun, SVP of the IoT Business Division, said that customers have options from an “all-in-one” offering supporting an unlimited number of connected devices, to a per device model.

And LG Uplus is also supporting partnership models, for example working with household appliance companies to enable services depending on the requirements and capabilities of the vendor.

The executive was also clear on where the strengths – connectivity – and weaknesses of operators lie.

“Our weakness lies in sensing and data analytics – that’s not the strength of telecoms companies,” he said. “We are thinking about how to improve our capabilities in these two regards.”

NB-IoT launch
LG Uplus is also looking at IoT options beyond the home, for example smart city and smart metering, and industrial applications. And it will also develop its infrastructure to support this.

“Next year we will try to deploy an NB-IoT network nationwide, if possible in the first half.”