BT Korea hosts competition for NGC service

NEW DELHI, INDIA: BT Korea, the local operation of BT, announced that it would host an open competition for next-generation communications service models through February 2009.  Individuals and college students are invited for a contest to plan and develop a real-world service model by using the “21CN”, BT’s open global platform.

The event is held to provide people with hands-on experience in open platforms, widely viewed as the foundation for the future communications environment, and further help IT talent in Korea to sharpen their global competitiveness.  

The competition will be open to everyone who has interest in the topic irrespective of occupation, age and gender. Individual or team contestants are first evaluated for their plans for next-generation communications business models during the first screening process. After the final-round contestants demonstrate their service models on 21CN.

BT’s global platform for customer-driven innovation, the winner or winning team will be selected. They will then compete in the Killer App Challenge hosted by Ribbit, the silicon valley-based Telco 2.0 company bought by BT in July 2008, where developers from all over the world compete over the prize of 100,000 dollars. BT further plans to adopt some of the best ideas proposed at the open competition in developing a new service model for its customers in Korea and across the world.  

“The future communications environment will continue to expand, delivering tens or tens of hundreds of services to people over open networks,” said HJ Kim, managing director of BT Korea. “Our goal is to provide IT talent in Korea with an opportunity to early experience in an advanced global communications environment, and help them to grow into IT experts who will lead the global communications scene in the future.”

A total of 14 million won cash prize is handed out to winners or winning teams 5 million for the first place winner/winning team, 3 million each for two second-place winners/winning teams and 1 million won each for three third-place winners/winning teams. The deadline for filings of service model plans is set to December 30 2008, and the final demonstrations are held on February 25 2009 after screening.