As the nation’s top telecommunications firm, KT Corp. has a few guidelines in place for helping out its vendors and, in general, creating a market of fair competition: Engage in fair transactions with its vendors, help build up their competitiveness, help them break into new territory and last but not least, promote forward-looking mutual growth.

And underlying of these is the unwavering corporate philosophy laid out by the top KT management that Korea should seek to build an IT society that “everyone can be happy in.” 

“KT strives to become a cornerstone corporation that is based on ideas for creating more value through mutual growth and sharing its outcome,” said company chairman Lee Suk-chae.

The efforts must be paying off, given that the company received high marks from the National Commission for Corporate Partnership for its policies for pursuing coprosperity with smaller companies, mostly the vendors and suppliers.

KT prides itself on possessing all the right “stuff” for achieving that goal, as it has the sufficient platform, contents and solutions.

Based on this foundation, one of the biggest contributions that KT has made to the industry is to help shape a content eco-system, which Korea critically lacked.

What KT does is help content developers get their work out into the open to eventually go global. The company hopes to offer financial and strategic assistance during the process, executives said.

To do that, KT last year began to create a 100 billion won ($88.7 million) fund to offer financial support for developers of various content, including animation, online games and music.

The infrastructure is provided by Olleh Media Studio.

To achieve global exposure for these contents, KT has plans to use its diverse platforms, including IPTV.

Another way KT seeks to offer a helping hand is by giving small and mid-sized startups a chance to use its office solutions, such as “Olleh Bizmeka Groupware” and “Olleh Bizmeka Semuro” for a year, free of charge.

For the startups, this means they can save up to 4 million won, annually and reduce the costs for implementing IT solutions.

“We hope that this can be an opportunity for SMEs to experience our easy-to-use software as a service-type solution, which is used by up to 640,000 companies nationwide, and also get settled as quickly as possible,” said Min Jeong-ik, who is in charge of KT’s Biz Solutions.

The company’s Econovation Center is another place where both people and technology receive a leg-up.

The center, established following KT’s announcement in 2010 that it would nurture up to 3,000 mobile application developers of a global caliber, offers support to spur the development of mobile apps running on open operation systems.

Consulting, technological support and market information are only some of the assistance the center offers the R&D staff.

Ultimately, KT hopes to create a mobile eco-system under which all participants, including the app developers, designers and engineers, can freely communicate and work together in.

By Kim Ji-hyun (jemmie@heraldcorp.com)