SK Telecom (NYSE: SKM) announced that 'oksusu,' its mobile IPTV service jointly operated with SK Broadband* has received the ‘Most Innovative Video/Multimedia Product or Service’ Best Mobile Video, TV or Film App' award at the Leading Lights Awards 2017.

* SK Broadband is a wholly owned subsidiary of SK Telecom which provides IPTV, broadband internet and telephony services in Korea

The Leading Lights Awards is an annual awards program run by Light Reading, the market-leading publication for the global communications networking and services industry. Now in its thirteenth year, the award recognizes top companies and their executives for their outstanding achievements in next-generation communications technology, applications, and services.

The “Most Innovative Video/Multimedia Product or Service” award is presented to the company that has developed a potentially market-leading product, application or strategy that has enabled the launch, deployment or creation of innovative, profitable video/TV/audio/multimedia services during the past year.

Launched in January 2016, oksusu is an innovative mobile IPTV service available to all users including non-SK Telecom subscribers. By offering a total of 115 live TV streaming channels, 170,000 different video on demand (VOD) content including movies and dramas, as well as differentiated original content, oksusu is leading the mobile IPTV market in Korea with an average number of 4.7 million monthly unique visitors.

Besides offering a rich variety of content, oksusu offers greater convenience and personalization through the application of diverse cutting-edge technologies. For instance, by adding ‘T Live Streaming,’ the world’s first true real-time mobile streaming technology, to oksusu in May 2016, SK Telecom was able to reduce latency of live streaming to less than 3 seconds to dramatically enhance user experience. oksusu is also built with a sophisticated personalization engine that analyzes data – i.e. user’s age, gender, preferred genre and viewing history – for each content to offer a content curation service.

Furthermore, in April 2017, oksusu has adopted ‘Vcase,’ a personal broadcasting service platform developed by the Media Technology R&D Center of SK Telecom. Vcase enables anyone to create his or her own content and transmit it through the Internet. With Vcase, individual content creators can produce and share their content anytime without having to use high cost broadcasting equipment, which in turn further enriches the pool of content for oksusu users.

Meanwhile, in February 2017, SK Telecom’s oksusu has also received the GSMA Global Mobile Awards (GLOMO Awards) 2017 in the category of ‘Best Mobile Video, TV or Film App’ in February 2017.

Kim Jong-won, Senior Vice President and Head of Media & Home Business Office at SK Telecom and Mobile Business Office at SK Broadband said, “We are delighted to receive this award as it recognizes our efforts to develop and offer the best media services. We will continue to lead the media industry by securing more diverse customer-oriented content, creating an easily accessible broadcasting environment and investing in future technologies including virtual reality.”