KT, zigbang want pieces of Saudi NEOM city project

KT, Korea’s leading telecom and IT service provider, and real estate start-up zigbang have joined the contest to get contracts from Saudi Arabia’s NEOM city project, following Naver and a lot of tech players from across the globe.

A Saudi Arabian delegation led by Minister of Municipality, Rural Affairs and Housing Majed Al-Hogail listens to Naver’s presentation on smart cities at the company’s headquarters in Seongnam, Gyeonggi, on Nov. 29. [NAVER]

KT, Korea’s leading telecom and IT service provider, and real estate start-up zigbang have joined the contest to get contracts from Saudi Arabia’s NEOM city project, following Naver and a lot of tech players from across the globe.

“KT plans to make a bid for the NEOM project,” a spokesperson from the company said on Friday. A spokesperson from zigbang echoed that ambition.

It is too early to name frontrunners or even a full list of contenders for the mega-scale urban redevelopment project, given that official bidding for its IT infrastructure has not begun.

KT and zigbang demonstrated a slew of technologies and services related to smart city when a Saudi Arabian delegation led by Minister of Municipality, Rural Affairs and Housing Majed Al-Hogail visited Korea on Nov. 29.

Al-Hogail shakes hands with a Naver robot. [NAVER]

KT presented details about an intelligent transport system and how the system is deployed on Jeju Island during a forum co-hosted by Korea’s Land Ministry and Saudi’s Housing Ministry. Al-Hogail was present at the event.

The major portion of zigbang’s presentation was dedicated to a virtual model house and other smart home services.

The Saudi delegation visited the headquarters of Naver in Seongnam, Gyeonggi after developers from Naver flew to Saudi Arabia last month with high-ranking government officials and representatives of construction companies interested in bidding for parts of the project, which has an estimated budget of $500 billion.

The government officials paid attention to areas like traffic control, security and prevention of natural disasters like flooding. On its trip to Naver headquarters last month, the delegation visited the Naver 1784 building, completed early this year, which is packed with cutting-edge technology from robotics to cloud computing. It is right next to the Naver Green Factory headquarters building.

Naver 1784 was named after its address — 178-4 Jeongja-dong, Bundang, Gyeonggi — as well as the year when the Industrial Revolution began. Certified as Korea’s first “robot-friendly” building by the Smart City Association, the building uses more than 316 patented technologies, according to Naver.

Land Minister Won Hee-ryong accompanies Al-Hogail to a forum in Seoul. [YONHAP]

Another piece of tech that Naver brings to the table is three dimensional mapping technologies that enable a digital twin of the physical world.

Naver Labs, the division responsible for mapping and object recognition technologies, has produced a 3-D map of Seoul in collaboration with the Seoul city government.

Naver claims that it is more than just a 3-D collection of photographs. The information within the photographs — such as the height of buildings and the composition of roads and traffic systems — are all analyzed and translated into data that can be used flexibly.

The detailed archive of the city landscape can be used in traffic control systems for drones and cars, real estate analysis and natural disaster prevention systems by simulating flooding and other natural disasters.

The Saudi delegation also paid a visit to LG's research and development center where LG CNS showed its data analytics system tailored to process and analyze a massive amount of information on traffic and energy usage.

BY PARK EUN-JEE [park.eunjee@joongang.co.kr]