"Bridging the Digital Divide" SK Telecom Opens Dedicated Center for Digital Blind Spots

Support for Instructor and Stakeholder Training and Events in the 'Digital Capability Enhancement Project' Across Five Regions Nationwide

[Asia Economy Reporter Eunmo Koo] SK Telecom announced on the 24th that it has opened the ‘Digital Blind Spot Dedicated Center’ at the SK Namsan Building in Jung-gu, Seoul, to systematically support digital capacity-building projects for information-disadvantaged groups.

The Digital Blind Spot Dedicated Center is a space established to comprehensively support digital capacity-building projects in five local governments?Seoul, Incheon, Daejeon, Daegu, and Gyeongnam Province?supported by SK Telecom. It serves as a training and information exchange venue to enhance the expertise of instructors responsible for education in each local government and will also be utilized as a hub for industry-academia-research linked projects.

The digital capacity-building project, led by the Ministry of Science and ICT and commissioned by the National Information Society Agency (NIA), was initiated last year to bridge the information gap among digitally marginalized groups and is planned to continue as part of the Digital New Deal until 2025. Through a pilot project conducted from last year to February this year, SK Telecom provided over 300,000 hours of education to approximately 190,000 people, achieving outcomes such as reducing the information gap and creating jobs.

This year, SK Telecom is promoting the digital capacity-building project in collaboration with A-LUX, a specialized digital education company. The program strengthens customized education foundations for digitally vulnerable groups, including seniors and people with disabilities who face difficulties using ICT services, and diversifies educational programs to allow experience with products and services across the SK ICT family companies.

To this end, educational content includes practical services such as e-commerce usage methods for seniors and mobility service reservations, and various ICT solutions like AI speakers and multi-party video call solutions have been added to the educational infrastructure.

Furthermore, SK Telecom plans to secure customized education foundations tailored to different target groups among information-disadvantaged people of various ages to address the information gap throughout society. This year’s programs include silver generation education linked to AI care services for seniors, AI coding schools for children in financially challenged multicultural families who need digital education, developer training for job seekers, and education for small business owners.

Lee Junho, Head of ESG Business at SK Telecom, stated, “We will continue efforts to establish a customized education system for each target group by adding education for small business owners and job seekers to the education focused on seniors and children.”

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.