Government agency Korea Overseas Infrastructure & Urban Development Corp (KIND) has signed a memorandum of understanding with South Korea’s largest telecoms provider, KT Corp, to bolster the country’s data center industry.

In the document signed earlier this month and seen by Business Korea, both pledged to promote KT’s data center business and smart city projects internationally - with KT designing and operating data centers and KIND seeking new partnerships and investments overseas.

Time to be kind

Park Yoon-young, head of KT’s Enterprise Business Development Unit said that thanks to the partnership, “KT will leverage its diverse business achievements in the domestic market into expanding globally“ and “will help Korean businesses avail themselves of ICT resources as easily abroad as they do in the nation.”

KIND CEO Hur Kyong-Goo added that the cooperation would allow it to “more effectively assist Korean businesses in achieving their global reach.”

Established in 2018, KIND was created to help Korean firms establish public-private partnerships by providing technical assistance, funding, and acting as a negotiator on infrastructure projects.

So far these have included power generation projects in Turkey, Portugal, Australia, and Chile as well as the construction of a hospital in Turkey.

KT was part of the consortium of telecoms providers that trialed the world’s first limited commercial 5G networks last year, along with SK Telecom and LG Uplus.

As well as its mobile communications business, KT operates 10 data centers in the country.

It was the first operator to deploy private cloud services in the country, but has since been joined by the likes of Amazon, Oracle, Microsoft, and Russian provider Yandex.

Equinix, who saw a gap in the market for carrier-neutral colocation and interconnection services, opened its first facility in the country last year. Hyperscale data center provider Digital Realty recently broke ground on a 12MW data center in the country, with plans to bring it online next year.