en.Wedoany.com Reported - KT Corporation has officially announced a total investment plan of 18 trillion won, with the core goal of positioning South Korea as an AI connectivity hub in Asia. Under this plan, 6 trillion won will be allocated to AI data centers and submarine cables, among other AI infrastructure, to address the surging demand for AI; an additional 12 trillion won will be invested in communication sectors such as information security, IT, and networks to support this strategy.

KT CEO Park Yoon-young unveiled this "AX Platform Company" vision on the occasion of his 100th day in office. He stated that in the AX era, where the objects of connectivity are expanding from human-centric to AI-centric, KT, as the nation's foundational telecommunications operator, will see no change in the essence of its connectivity. By solidifying the core of its telecommunications business and achieving deterministic growth, KT aims to lead South Korea's leap into becoming an AX powerhouse. The related growth strategy was concretized following inspections of the information security and network departments.

To strengthen its "solid core," KT plans to invest a total of approximately 12 trillion won over the next three years in information security, IT, and networks. This includes 4 trillion won for information security and IT innovation, a two-fold increase compared to the past three years, and 8 trillion won for the network sector. In information security, the company will comprehensively restructure its security system based on zero-trust principles, including establishing a routine prevention and response system, cloud-native transformation, integrating security operations, separating the roles of Chief Information Security Officer and Chief Privacy Officer while recruiting external experts, doubling the information security workforce, and establishing an industry-academia-research advisory committee along with a collaboration mechanism with white-hat hackers. In the network sector, the focus is on fundamentally enhancing customer-perceived quality and mastering core future network technologies such as 6G communications, satellites, and data center interconnection. The plan includes automated management of asset matching rates and dedicated personnel for asset renewal to achieve comprehensive oversight. In the satellite domain, KT is the only operator in South Korea directly managing multiple geostationary and low Earth orbit satellites, thereby ensuring national communication sovereignty and providing uninterrupted networks during disaster and emergency situations.

Building on this solid core, KT will pursue growth through AX infrastructure and service innovation. In terms of infrastructure, approximately 5 trillion won will be invested to construct additional AI data centers (AIDCs) with a total capacity of 1GW, based on actual demand. This plan aims to organically connect central AIDCs with AI edge nodes expanded near industrial sites, providing the ultra-low latency real-time inference environment required for the era of physical AI and autonomous driving. In anticipation of a surge in global submarine cable traffic demand, KT plans an initial investment of 1 trillion won to increase new submarine cable supply capacity by over 90Tbps. This is intended to attract global tech giants to invest in AIDCs in South Korea, funneling global traffic to the country and achieving the goal of becoming the "Asia AX Connectivity Hub."

In the service domain, KT will provide industry-specific "B2B AX" execution tools tailored to the core needs of clients in finance, public sector, manufacturing, and healthcare. In the financial sector, building on previous achievements in financial DX, agent-type AI such as AICC and sales agents will be extended to various segments. In the public sector, based on sovereign AI, trustworthy AI services will be delivered to meet government demands. In the manufacturing and healthcare sectors, KT will expand its physical AI business by participating in government pilot projects. For individual consumers (B2C), "B2C AX" emphasizes hyper-personalization, with goals including enabling customers to design their own rate plans and benefits, providing optimal customized service recommendations based on usage pattern analysis, and digitizing the entire customer journey from registration to customer service.

KT has also identified token factories and stablecoins as emerging AX business directions. According to Goldman Sachs research, global token consumption is projected to surge 24-fold from 5 quintillion per month to 120 quintillion per month over the next four years. Leveraging its ultra-precision billing and settlement capabilities accumulated from operating communication networks, combined with nationwide 1GW-scale AIDCs and proprietary models as token optimization engines, KT will build a "token factory" supporting token generation, intermediation, and billing. In the digital finance sector, KT will integrate the 16 million customer base of its subsidiary Kbank, the 3.5 million merchants and payment settlement capabilities of BC Card, and KT's own network and security infrastructure to form a full value chain capability spanning issuance, custody, settlement, network transmission, and the actual usage ecosystem. Furthermore, based on its AX infrastructure business, KT plans to upgrade business models for AX solutions such as token factories, stablecoins, and physical AI, develop a global roadmap expanding gradually from ASEAN to emerging markets, and continue exploring collaborations with Microsoft, Google, Palantir, as well as domestic AI companies Upstage, Rebellion, and Saltlux.