[Digital Today reporter Jin-ho Lee] South Korea’s three mobile carriers will activate special communication measures ahead of a fireworks festival to be held on Sept. 5 in Seoul’s Yeouido area, preparing for large crowds and a sharp rise in traffic. They plan to secure network quality through AI-based traffic forecasting, additional deployment of mobile base stations and 24-hour monitoring.

SK Telecom forecast this year’s event traffic based on last year’s measured data from the fireworks festival. Last year’s unique visitors totalled 193,000, and the peak number of simultaneous connections during the fireworks show was 88,000, confirming a trend of crowds expanding to nearby areas such as Noryangjin Fish Market and the Mapo Bridge Waterlight Plaza.

SKT reflected this by increasing fixed facilities at the Yeouido Hangang Park cruise pier, the clock tower and Yeouinaru Station. It will also add temporary facilities, including mobile base stations and electric-vehicle base stations.

It will in particular use its in-house AI operations system, A-One. A-One analyses event information in real time, predicts network quality and traffic, and automatically derives the number and locations of mobile base stations. SKT explained that this cut the time needed to analyse events and draw up response plans to 30 minutes from 5 days.

KT pre-checked network quality along major routes of movement such as Yeouido Hangang Park and nearby subway stations, and expanded the capacity of surrounding base stations. It will also deploy additional mobile base stations.

Using 5G network slicing technology, it will support organisers so they can receive CCTV footage across the venue without congestion. On the day of the event, it plans to run a 24-hour response system centred on an integrated control room and increase support personnel to respond quickly if unusual situations occur.

LG Uplus also built additional mobile base stations and temporary equipment, expecting crowds of about 1,000,000 during the event period. It also completed advance call-quality measurements and wireless network optimisation work.

During the event period, it will operate an integrated situation room at its Magok office building in Seoul and monitor equipment-by-equipment traffic and wireless network quality around the clock. It plans to use its AI-based autonomous operations network platform, AION, to respond pre-emptively to base-station overloads and automatically control traffic.