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SK Telecom is a leading telecom company in South Korea, but aside from telecommunications, it is also working on other projects. One of its most recent developments is the UAM or the urban air mobility to offer air taxi services to the public.
With this project, SK Telecom is aiming to become the very first company to launch air taxis by the year 2025. The company wants to release this “game changer” in the area of future mobility innovations.
According to The Korea Herald, SK Telecom is the only company that is not an automaker but is participating in the 2022 Busan Motor Show, which kicked off on Thursday, July 14 and will run until July 24. At the event, SKT will be unveiling its UAM service and presenting its business plans as well.
It was reported that SK Telecom is one of the three consortiums that forwarded a bid to participate in the K-UAM Grand Challenge, a government-backed program that was launched to choose a UAM business operator.
The other two groups that have submitted their bids in separate consortiums are Hyundai Motor Group and Kakao Mobility. These competitors have joined forces with air carriers for their offerings, but SK Telecom has no aviation partner.
“Our rivals also plan to launch air taxi services in the coming years, but we are confident that we will be the first to bring UAM aircraft to the market,” Ha Min Yong, SK Telecom’s chief development officer, said during a press conference at the 2022 Busan International Motor Show.
He added, “We also discussed internally whether the UAM business is something for air carriers only and concluded it is not. What we are seeing is that regulations or infrastructures for operating UAM service will be different from today’s operation of airplanes.”
While SK Telecom has no partner, it emphasized that it has its own competitive advantage against its rivals, and it is the fact that the company is already a total solution provider. It explained that communication in the air is very important for the success of air taxis or other air vehicles, and it is confident with this since SKT is a telecom firm in the first place.
Meanwhile, it was in June when SK Telecom first announced its plans to commercialize urban air mobility three years from now. The Korea Times reported at that time that the company’s CEO Ryu Young Sang said that the UAM would change the transportation market in the near future, and it is glad to become one of the pioneers in this change.
