SK Telecom and Facebook launch first TIP Ecosystem Acceleration Center

Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, CTO of SK Telecom and TIP chairman speaks at the TIP Summit (Photo: SK Telecom)

SK Telecom and Facebook have announced the launch of the first TIP Ecosystem Acceleration Center to give telecoms tech innovation a swift kick in the pants.

The TIP Ecosystem Acceleration Center will be established in Seoul in the first quarter of 2017, and it will be the first of several TIP centers worldwide that aim to incubate local talent and accelerate product development through support from global and local investors, said Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, CTO of SK Telecom and TIP chairman in a blog post:

With the growth of the internet and the rise of data-intensive services, we believe that innovation can and should come from everywhere, beyond the current sources. We need to find ways to attract the brightest entrepreneurial minds and innovative investors to work together as part of the wider TIP community to produce breakthrough technologies and products in telecom infrastructure space.

Choi said the acceleration center will provide access to mentorship and hands-on sessions with industry experts, with the goal of creating and fostering “a self-sustaining ecosystem that delivers new, innovative, agile and deployable infrastructure solutions to operators quickly and seamlessly.”

It’s been a busy week for TIP, which was spearheaded by Facebook and a number of marquee telecoms players earlier this year to apply an open-source approach to telecoms technology development with the goal of speeding up innovation and creating affordable solutions for extending broadband connectivity to underconnected and unconnected areas.

At the group’s first TIP Summit this week, Facebook unveiled Voyager, a white-box transponder platform for Open Packet DWDM, an open-source version of packet-optical technology for metro and long-haul fiber optic transport networks that decouples software and hardware, and uses open specs that anyone can use to contribute their own packet-optical systems, components or software.

Facebook also announced that the designs for its OpenCellular base station are now fully open source within TIP to accelerate the industry’s ability to provide wireless access in remote areas. “We’re excited to see how this knowledge transfer will empower our partners to develop solutions that meet the unique needs of remote communities,” said Choi.

TIP also admitted several new members to the fold this week, including Bell Canada, du (EITC), NBN, Orange, Telia, Telstra, Accenture, Amdocs, Canonical, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Toyota InfoTechnology Center.

And TIP launched a “People and Process” project group, whose mission is to “develop and share cultural and process transformation best practices that can improve operators’ key metrics.” The group will be co-chaired by Bell Canada and Facebook. Other members include Accenture, Agilitrix, Bell Canada, Deloitte, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, NBN, SK Telecom, Tata Communications, Telefonica, and Telstra.

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