Futuristic cities offer wireless access to the web anywhere, anytime

Futuristic cities offer wireless access to the web anywhere, anytime

2005-12-13

For many years, Korea has proven to be a trailblazer in the information-technology sector. And the country won't likely stop until it attains its ultimate vision of creating a "ubiquitous" society where people can connect to the web, television and other services anytime, anywhere.

Korea's central and local governments, as well as businesses, have begun to test out the possibilities of creating that visionary state through "u-city" or ubiquitous city projects.

U-city is intended to give its residents not only a more convenient lifestyle but also more secure, environmental and humane way of life.

This will be achieved by integrating the latest IT infrastructures and information services into urban space. Technologies that are likely to be featured in u-cities include broadband convergence network, radio frequency identification, ubiquitous sensor network, home networking, WiBro, digital multimedia broadcasting, telematics, geographic information system, location-based system, smart card system and video conference technologies.

The list of local governments that have shown initial interest in becoming u-cities include Unjeong, Busan, Daejeon, Dongtan and New Songdo City.

Seoul also has been pushing its own u-city project since 1998 in the western district of Sangam-dong, which is being developed as a research and development hub for the high-tech industry.

Incheon also has been eager to take up the project and is poised to provide a state-of-the-art network environment in New Songo City, a new international town it is building for completion in 2014.

These local governments, however, have not gone much beyond drawing basic blueprints and have given little consideration on how to connect similar services between cities.

Thus, there has existed the necessity to integrate the existing diverse plans and set a standardized u-city model.

To that end, the Korean Ministry of Information and Communication, in collaboration with the Ministry of Construction and Transportation, recently set up a task force of officials and experts to cope with standardization and other issues that are bound to come up.

"U-cities will be realized mainly in newly built cities. It's easier to start from a white blank canvas than on the existing urban infrastructure," said Park Yong-min, a government official at the broadband convergence network division of the Information-Communication Ministry.

"As of now, it is most important to prepare legal, systematic frameworks for ubiquitous cities," he said.

The private sector has also been keen to proceed with u-city projects.

On Dec. 5, KT Corp. and the Korea National Housing Corporation signed an agreement to build a futuristic high-tech city in Unjeong, northwest of Seoul.

Unjeong is a new town to be built within the Paju City near the South-North Korean border.

Under the agreement, the Korea National Housing Corporation and KT will jointly invest 90 billion won to build the latest wireless infrastructure, such as "fiber-to-the-home" and broadband networks, in Unjeong by 2009.

Ubiquitous cities are being promoted in the "Cyberport" of Hong Kong and "multimedia super corridor" of Malaysia, but Unjeong is the first ubiquitous city for residential purposes, an official at the Korea National Housing Corporation said.

"KT's enhanced crisis management system (in Unjeong), for example, will protect citizens from the danger of gas pipe leaks or fires," said Han Hyun-bae, an official at KT's u-city project development team.

"Local governments welcome the possible changes (that may be brought as a result of building a u-city), such as jobs created from an association of old and new industries and thriving IT and construction businesses," Han added.

KT said it will invest around 100 billion won in building telecommunication infrastructure and another 90-170 billion won in building various service infrastructures in Unjeong.

KT also plans to join Yongin City and Dongtan-myeon in Gyeonggi Province to pursue similar projcts.

Last June, LG CNS Co. signed a memorandum of understanding with NSC, a joint venture between U.S.-based real-estate company Gale International and POSCO E&C of Korea, to establish a consortium to build ubiquitous infrastructures in the New Songdo City NSC is building.

"Songdo U-life Limited Corporation," an LG CNS official said, will invest 1 trillion won by 2014 and is seeking other companies to join the consortium.

Further, local governments have region-specific plans.

The Busan city government plans to spend between 850-960 billion won to revamp Busan into a futuristic city by 2010.

It will focus on providing ubiquitous environment around the port area and convention/exhibition centers, as well as offering integrated transportation services, based on next-generation technologies including IPV6 and radio frequency identification.

Incheon plans to introduce an intelligent transportation system, home networking, tele-medicine, a disaster prevention/management system, and a pollution control system by 2020.

Jeju is likely to focus on tourism as it implements its u-city plans.

U-traffic, u-museum, u-park and u-coupon are four major targets that the Jeju provincial government wishes to achieve.

As a provincial government which started telematics service for the first time, Jeju plans to introduce a u-traffic system based on RFID technologies, to be completed by 2007. The system will allow residents to access traffic information anytime, anywhere, the government said.

U-museum will be realized at the Jeju Stones & Cultural Park in northern Jeju. An anti-theft system and a location-based system which keeps track of visitors' whereabouts will be set up within the museum. U-coupon system for collecting admittance fees will also be introduced.

The Suwon city government aims to introduce an individually-tailored administration system through which different administration sections can share information.

Noteworthy is Suwon's "u-protection" service which manages health conditions of senior citizens, especially those who live alone, using "mobile health-sensor" technologies.

For example, elderly citizens with the Alzheimer's disease will be identified via location-based technologies in cases that they get lost or struck with troubles.