KT said on Sunday it will participate, for the first time among South Korean telecom operators, in the ninth meeting of NATO's next-generation defence communications standardisation project, NWCSP, as a 5G and 6G standards committee member.

The meeting will be held at KT's Gwanghwamun Building West in Seoul from Sept. 28 to Oct. 2, hosted by the Ministry of National Defense and the Telecommunications Technology Association of Korea (TTA). About 100 people, including officials from defence and government bodies at home and abroad and telecom and standards experts, will attend to discuss ways to apply 5G and 6G in defence and the direction for developing next-generation defence communications standards.

NWCSP is a civil-military cooperation project in which government bodies and private-sector experts from NATO allies and partner countries take part to discuss the use and standardisation of next-generation mobile communications technology in defence. It holds offline meetings three times a year, and its eighth meeting in May was held in San Diego, the United States. In South Korea, the Ministry of National Defense, the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses (KIDA) and TTA are participating. From the ninth meeting, KT will begin activities by sending 5G and 6G standardisation experts.

At the meeting, participants will share the status of 5G and 6G technology development and defence applications by country and review standard documents for applying the latest communications technologies, including satellite communications and wireless backhaul, to defence. They will also discuss related technical standards so that different communications technologies and systems by country can be linked and operated together.

KT will share technology and deployment experience accumulated through its defence 5G business at the meeting. Based on its experience applying commercial 5G technology in defence, it will also present views on guidelines for introducing 5G and 6G-based defence communications technology and on the direction of standardising next-generation defence communications.

TTA plans to continue participating in NWCSP activities to draw up guidelines for introducing 5G and 6G technology in defence and to strengthen the international standards response capabilities of South Korea's defence and telecom industries.

Won-tae Kim (김원태), managing director and head of KT's Enterprise Public and Financial Business Division, said applying commercial mobile communications technologies such as 5G and 6G in defence is a task the private and defence sectors must solve together. He said the company will use its participation in the meeting to strengthen civil-military cooperation with relevant agencies and contribute to discussions on international standardisation of next-generation defence communications technology.