Korean IT Helps Beijing’s Olympics Go Digital

By Tim Alper / Editor



On 08/08/08, the luckiest day in the Chinese calendar, at 8pm in the evening, what China has promised to be the world’s most spectacular Olympics to date will officially begin.


The digital age has arrived, and IT has infiltrated every walk of life. That now includes, for the first time, the Olympic Games.However, much of the technology-driven spectacle that the games promise to offer us over the next few weeks will be thanks to imported IT, and much of that has come from, believe it or not, Korea.



Many of the new stations, though, have been built with the assistance of Korean technological advances.



1. Samsung SDS are the providers of the “Automatic Fare Collection” ticket barriers in the new stations

2. SK Telecom, Samsung Mobile and LG Telecom have all been active in the build-up to the games, too, releasing advanced 3G phone technology that is selling well in China. New Korean phones on sale in China use the special TD-SCDMA mobile phone standard which is being actively encouraged by the Chinese government. Samsung, Official Olympic Partners of the games, have released two “Olympic mobile phones" in China, the L288 and i688 models. Other 3. Korean companies are offering Satellite Navigation systems to tie in with the game, many of them which also receive digital mobile television broadcasts, helping people on the move to keep up with the latest from the games.

4. A further boost for Korean IT is the news that DMB (Digital Multimedia Broadcasting) is being applied as the digital broadcasting standard in many of the Olympic tie-in devices now on sale in China. This represents a huge boost for DMB, a Korean-developed technology. When DMB was introduced in Korea in 2005, hopes were high that Korea could export the standard, and then lead the way in digital TV as a result. Since then, however, DMB has been dealt a series of blows, as the European Union has decided to pursue the DVB format and North America has thrown its lot in with ATSC. Japan has even had some joy in exporting its standard, ISDB, to Latin America.China has been developing its own standard, the China Multimedia Mobile Broadcasting (CMMB) system, which was released in late 2006. However, Korean DMB and DMB-T/H, a Chinese variant of DMB, have gradually been gaining popularity in China.



This comes as an enormous boost to Korean hardware producers, who know that China, which has the world’s largest amount of mobile phone users, is a glittering prize for the telecommunications market. In China, the Olympic Games are being seen as a historic milestone. China is officially on the map in terms of developed countries. Since China’s market was opened up the world in the 1970s, the county’s economy has boomed. China will be the world’s richest country by 2020, and this new-found Chinese wealth means that international competition in the Chinese IT market has become cut-throat.As a close neighbour, an IT specialist, and a country with an Official Olympic Partner represented at the games, Korean companies might just have the inside track when it comes to meeting China’s growing IT demands.



Sorce : Korea It times Move : E-Business Briefing