South Korea’s most populous telecoms provider, ‘KT Corporation,’ is boosting a partnership with China Mobile targeting blockchain technology and 5G roaming.

As a local English-language news outlet, The Korea Herald announced on Dec. 5; KT is planning to debut 5G roaming capabilities in China later this month. 

At the same time, the companies are working on a blockchain system that will enable them to save time and costs when calculating roaming charges for mobile users. 

According to The Korea Herald, the B.Link system can “self-analyze roaming data from the two carriers and can process roaming charges on a real-time basis.”

The news comes about six months after KT revealed it had built a blockchain network of its own. KT Network Blockchain likewise targets roaming, simultaneously with other use cases such as user identification.

That announcement, indeed, followed KT’s Blockchain-as-a-Service, or ‘BaaS,’ which intends to ease access to the technology for South Korean firms. 

Telecoms embraces blockchain potential

South Korea and China have thrown their weight behind blockchain technology, the latter making it a component of formal state policy in a widely-reported publicity campaign last month. 

Spirit is also evident in South Korea, with technology giant ‘Kakao Corporation’ describing its ‘Klaytn’ blockchain offering as being more liberal than Facebook’s Libra project in recent comments.

For the telecoms industry specifically, blockchain meanwhile should bring $1 billion of added value by 2023, according to a study published last year.