[Consumerwide - Jinil Kang Reporter / Yohan Bok Reporter]  Less than a month is left until the new year. The communication industry is continuing its ESG activities. Some focus on social contribution, while others concentrate on the discovery and training of new ESG businesses. Practice of ESG returns as consumption value.

SKT is initiating social contributions by establishing a social safety network. SKT has accumulated 1.76 million cases of AI greeting call services for 11.538 thousand customers till today. This service is built upon the NUGU Bizcall system and will begin operating in October 2022. The AI greeting call service is checking out the safety of elderly or one-person household citizens who are relatively vulnerable to mental and physical diseases. Currently, AI greeting call service is hosted in cooperation with the major 100 local governments and institutes, which include 22 districts of Seoul, 10 districts of Incheon, and 24 institutes under the Senior Centre (living in single-person households). It was evaluated as effective. For the last year, this service has helped 4063 people who were facing danger in vulnerable conditions. Greetings on a regular basis were not the end of the service. 40063 people who responded "I am sick." or "facing difficulties" were connected to expert consultants (Happy Connect) for practical resolution. Along with this, through the AI calls, 6,780 welfare service inquiries, including "break of boiler" and "lack of trash bags," were passed to the local government. Furthermore, SKT plans to enhance AI call services, including greeting services, in various ESG social safety network sectors by installing A.X, which is a SKT-invented LLM model.

Meanwhile, KT began discovering ICT venture businesses and young adult workers in the ESG sector.

Since 2021, the Challenge Project, which is one of the ESG management activities of KT, has been facilitating the "Adding value (warmth) to technology" program. This programme discovers and supports social ventures that aim to resolve social issues in the environment and digital sectors. The six-month "Adding value (warmth) to technology" challenge initiative from KT is now over. This year, they have supported six businesses by providing a business fund worth 0.6 billion won and providing technology and management consulting using future technology assets of KT Group, including AI, which can enhance the service of businesses. In particular, KT has chosen Mobawheel (excellent) and Yataveent (outstanding) among environmental sector businesses (Hanaloof and Vpplab) and digital-embracing sector businesses (Yatavent, Thecheat, Mobiwheel, and Weplant) and rewarded them with funds for additional projects. KT clearly announced they will constantly strive to construct virtuous circle systems and ecological development, which can feed both the quality and quantity of these businesses.

LGU+ initiated activities to take care of single elderly households by delivering food. LGU has been facilitating this activity with partner businesses for the last ten years as a part of its social contribution. A total of 70 volunteers from partner businesses and LGU+s (LGU and welfare centres, U+ shared growth board-associated businesses, and small and large business agriculture and fishery-associated funds) have participated in the "Sharing of Love Package." The love package is going to be delivered to 880 single elderly household families through Senior Support Centres (a consignment corporation of the Ministry of Health and Welfare). LGUplus, which has been advancing in spreading a shared growth culture in Korea along with their partner businesses for the last ten years, will continue their social contribution activities so that this warmth may fill the entire land.