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SK Planet to push its big data business

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Sharath Kumar
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SEOUL, S.KOREA: SK Planet, a SK Telecom's mobile platform affiliate, is pushing its big data business - in particular, its weather information service.

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The firm said it was more than ready to enter the big data market, which has excellent growth potential in areas ranging from Web solutions to manufacturing, transportation, weather sensors and electrical grids.

"We are optimistic about the potential of the big data market," said SK Planet spokeswoman Lee Ho-yeon. "This year, companies will ask, ‘What can I do with big data?' Given this renewed focus on analytic applications, this year will create greater demand for people with customized skills in what we call ‘data science.'"

Big data refers to a massive volume of both structured and unstructured data that is quite difficult to process using traditional database and software techniques, according to experts. It can help companies improve operations and decision making, they added.

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SK Planet believes its real-time weather information service is a starting point that will allow it to ride the big data wave, according to the company. It has recently expanded Weather Planet - its real-time, hyper-local weather service - to the entire capital.

Weather Planet provides real-time weather information, including information on temperature, humidity, precipitation, atmospheric pressure and wind speed and direction. It collects the information from observatory facilities called automatic weather stations installed at mobile network base stations using Internet of Things technology.

"The service can help users prepare for a torrential rainfall or a weather anomaly," Lee said.

The company installed automatic weather stations at 264 base stations in Seoul and another 131 around Incheon in June last year. It also established 694 base stations in Gyeonggi Province as of late last month.

"A total of 1,089 weather observatory facilities, each installed within 1 to 3 kilometers of each other, can create the world's densest weather observatory network," she added. "This is about five times the coverage density of the nation's meteorological agency."

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