Korea's advanced transportation IT infrastructure is laid in Latin America.

The Seoul Metropolitan Government's transportation card system has successfully entered the city of Bogotá, the world's representative example of BRT, an eco-friendly transportation system.

IT services company LG CNS (CEO Kim Dae-hoon, www.lgcns.com) announced that it has been selected to build and operate the AFC (Automatic Fare Collection) and BMS (Bus Management System) in Bogotá, the capital of Colombia, one of the three largest cities in South America, based on the successful implementation of the Seoul Transportation Card System.

LG CNS will initially deploy the AFC and BMS for more than 12,000 buses and 40 stations within the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) system in Bogotá, starting in the second half of this year, over a period of one and a half years.

Then, by 2015, all buses and BRT stops in Bogotá will be integrated into a single transit system. The total value of the project, including 15 years of operation, is worth KRW 300 million in IT services alone. This is the largest single project since LG CNS was founded in 1987, and is a rare 'mega project' in Korea's overseas export of IT services. LG CNS will focus on domestic equipment such as terminals, gates, and chargers for buses and stations, and will grow together with the export of domestic IT companies.

LG CNS won the project after about three months of fierce competition from global companies such as Spain and Brazil since May. The city of Bogotá, which has attracted global attention for its successful BRT introduction, has made a concerted effort to promote the project at the national level. To ensure a "fair selection," TransMilenio (Bogotá City Transportation Authority) made the entire process open to the public, from the call for bids to the technical and price evaluation, even broadcasting the final evaluation hearing live on public television. Major Colombian media outlets, including EL TIEMPO, also covered the news that Korea's transportation card system will be introduced in Bogotá.

In 2004, Seoul introduced the central bus lane system after benchmarking Bogotá's BRT and other public transportation systems, and opened the Seoul New Transportation Card System, which integrates public transportation such as buses and subways into a single transit system. Seven years later, LG CNS, the company that built the Seoul transportation card system, won the Bogotá transportation card system project, achieving the national feat of exporting the Seoul transportation card system that revolutionized public transportation.

The Seoul transportation card system is currently successfully operating in Wellington and Auckland, the capital cities of New Zealand, and Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. In addition, local governments and transportation officials from more than 80 countries around the world have visited and benchmarked Seoul. In particular, inquiries from metropolitan cities with a population of more than 10 million people, such as Moscow, the capital of Russia, are continuing, brightening the prospects of winning large projects in Bogota, Colombia.

"The Bogotá project win is a great achievement of Korea's sales diplomacy with the support of the Seoul Metropolitan Government, the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Maritime Affairs, the Ministry of Foreign Trade, the Ministry of Knowledge Economy (KOTRA), and the Ministry of the Interior and Safety," said Kim Dae-hoon, President of LG CNS. "LG CNS will continue to develop its own proven solutions and platforms customized for each country, along with the success of large domestic projects such as the Seoul transportation card system, and make every effort to discover global businesses."

Since the announcement of LG CNS Vision 2020 in July last year, LG CNS has been targeting overseas markets with the most overseas subsidiaries (7 in the Americas, Japan, etc.) among IT service companies, and has been showing tangible results, including the Bogota project win. The current 10% share of LG CNS's overseas sales is expected to expand to 50% by 2020.