South Korean telecom company KT Corporation (NYSE:KT) has just unveiled its own network blockchain, thus becoming the first telecommunications firm to apply blockchain to its business.
The telecom company announced that it developed the proprietary blockchain with the aim of applying it to its commercial network in various areas such as energy management, roaming and identity confirmation. A recent report from CoinDesk Korea stated that KT’s new blockchain can process up to 2,500 transactions per second and this is made possible through the integration with the company’s superfast commercial network.
“Public blockchains have low processing speed and capacity, while private blockchains have low transparency. By applying blockchain onto our ultra-fast network, we have overcome both obstacles,” stated KT’s Seo Yeong-il, the executive in charge of KT’s Blockchain division.
Despite the already impressive speeds reportedly offered by the newly launched blockchain network, KT still claims that it can boost the speeds to 10,000 transactions per second and it plans to reach this figure before the end of 2018. It also plans to clock speeds higher than 10,000 transactions per second in 2019.
KT revealed that it plans to use the blockchain network to significantly improve its international roaming services and also authenticate the identities of users subscribed to its services. The secure nature of blockchain technology is also expected to be one of the benefits of the blockchain integration, thus facilitating more security when data is being shared by global partners through a network. Additionally, the new blockchain network allows users to log into individual websites using a blockchain ID, thus eliminating the need for a separate login procedure.
Energy trading and partnerships
The telecom network’s new blockchain will also be applied in energy trading sometime over the next few months where corporations involved will act as nodes to trade unused energy within a decentralized network. The blockchain solution will help to drastically reduce the time it takes to calculate electricity payments and also facilitate more efficient handling of electricity distribution.
KT also announced that the first stage of operations will involve partnerships with Japan’s NTT DoCoMo and China Mobile. The partnerships will be geared towards tech research for international data roaming.
