Yoo Young-sang, SKT President, "Embedding GPU in Wired and Wireless Communication... Evolving into AI Infrastructure"

AI Company Transformation Vision Revealed... Advanced Proprietary LLM
Global Telecom Partnership... Commercialization of Multilingual Services

Yu Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom, is speaking at a CEO press briefing held on the 26th (local time) at the Fira Gran Via exhibition center in Barcelona, Spain, where Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2024 is taking place. Photo by Joint Press Corps

Yoo Young-sang, CEO of SK Telecom (photo), stated on the 26th, "We will enhance the value of our infrastructure by embedding proprietary GPUs (graphics processing units) into our wired and wireless communication networks," adding, "In the long term, we plan to evolve our wired and wireless infrastructure into AI infrastructure."

At the shareholders' meeting held at the headquarters in Euljiro, Seoul, Yoo said in his business report, "It will be difficult to increase customer trust in AI services with unstable communication."

He reiterated the goal of evolving SKT into a "global AI company." He promised shareholders that this year, they would show tangible results by concretizing the "AI Pyramid Strategy" established last September.

To this end, the plan is to expand AI data centers to twice the current scale by 2030 and to advance their own service "A. Dot" to develop a global AI personal assistant.

Recently, SKT launched the "Global Telco AI Alliance (GTAA)" with telecom companies such as Deutsche Telekom and Singtel, which have about 1.3 billion subscribers across more than 50 countries. Through GTAA, they plan to commercialize AI-based multilingual telecom specialized services and expand them worldwide.

Yoo said, "We plan to flexibly apply region-specific specialized services through multilingual telecom data learning via GTAA," adding, "We are also securing bargaining power against big tech companies."

He mentioned the three major AI companies?OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google?and said, "No domestic company has the investment capacity and technological prowess at the level of these companies," adding, "SKT is pursuing partnerships with the world's top three AI giants by leveraging GTAA."

He revealed that while promoting AI-based ESG management, they have established six principles for AI governance: connection, reliability, diversity and inclusion, enhancement of human welfare, transparency of decisions, and ethical responsibility.

When asked about his views on number portability switching subsidies, he said, "We are making efforts to respond to the government's policy to activate competition," but predicted, "The axis of competition will shift long-term toward products and services such as pricing plans."

He added, "Even if competition over switching subsidies accelerates, shareholder value will not be compromised."

Meanwhile, SKT's sales last year were about 17.6 trillion won, an increase of 1.8% compared to the previous year. Operating profit rose 8.8% to 1.75 trillion won.

Enterprise businesses such as data centers and cloud services drove sales growth. The number of 5G subscribers increased by 2.27 million from the previous year to 15.67 million, accounting for 68% of total subscribers.