Hwang Chang-gyu, CEO of South Korea’s leading mobile carrier KT Corp., suggested that telecommunications companies around the world cooperate in order to prevent infectious diseases from spreading at the UN Global Compact (UNGC) Leaders Summit 2016 held in New York last Thursday (local time). To that end, KT showed the intention to release big data algorithm it has accumulated to control the spread of infectious diseases such as avian influenza and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) and pass on its know-how to developing countries through United Nations (UN).

The CEO introduced the case that prevented the spread of avian influenza through big data technology, saying, “we would provide the world with KT’s big data technology to help make the world without infectious diseases.” Established in 2000, the UNGC is a UN initiative to encourage businesses worldwide to adopt sustainable and socially responsible policies. Currently, about 8,800 companies in 162 countries are members of the UNGC and KT joined in 2008. The UNGC Leaders Summit is a meeting for leaders in industries to share their performance and is held in every three years.

“Big data helped predict avian influenza to reduce about $1.8 billion (2.64 trillion won) in Korea and it is also applicable to other infectious diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) and MERS,” he said.

“As data is the key and the power, telecommunications companies that have information of 7.3 billion mobile phones around the world could stop infectious diseases including Zika virus and Ebola virus if they work together,” he added. He suggested the joint big data system to the world. Under the system, the mobile carriers would share big data, location information and roaming data; the countries would help the companies share data; the UN would intermediate between the governments and business operators.

Lise Kingo, the Executive Director of the UNGC, said that the UNGC expects that the innovative technology would contribute to improving quality of human lives and it would review the application of the technology to UN activities. In particular, the UNGC is said to consider selecting KT as a company for the sustainable development goals (SDGs).

By Lee Sun-hee

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