A baseball, which has 108 stitches, measures 23cm in circumference and 148g in weight. This year, common carriers and IT companies have started pitching at full energy with ‘Beacon,’ which is far smaller than a baseball, even before the professional baseball season begins. These companies are preparing for the opening game by installing this small terminal, which measures as small as a KRW 500 coin, all over the baseball fields. ‘Beacon stadium,’ which has been activated since early last year in the U.S., is landing in Korea’s professional baseball.
According to the communications industry on the 1st, SK Wyverns, Hanwha Eagles, NC Dynos and a new team KT Wiz are installing ‘Beacon’ in their home stadiums. They are accelerating construction schedule so as to provide the service in time for the opening of this year’s baseball season on March 28.
SK Telecom and KT are setting up Beacon system in Munhak Stadium in Incheon, the home field of SK Wyverns, and KT Wiz Park in Suwon respectively. As for Hanwha Eagle’s stadium in Daejeon, Hanwha S&C is handling Beacon facility installation. NC Dynos is also setting up Beacon system in its home field in Masan. As Beacon terminals are mostly installed outdoors, waterproof and dustproof terminal technology is important.
Beacon is a Bluetooth-based near-field communication device. Although defined as near-field, Beacon enables communication over 70m while the existing near-field technology is for communication within 10cm (NFC). Enabling non-contact service, Beacon can be used not only indoors, but also in most outdoor environments. Interworking with a smartphone where Beacon application is installed, this technology automatically provides such services as discount coupons. It also provides a payment function. So, users do not need to wait in long lines to buy tickets to baseball games or to enter the stadium. SK Telecom plans to provide social network service (SNS) for real-time event and game information by linking users’ smartphones with electronic boards in stadiums.
The biggest feature of Beacon is that it can provide indoor location information. Global positioning system (GPS), which is used in navigation system, is useless indoors. However, Beacon, which is a terminal fixed to a single position, provides information about user’s location even in indoor spaces. The positioning error, according to sources, is only around 5 – 10cm. Using Beacon’s indoor positioning function, users can conveniently find their seats even in Munhak Stadium where there are over 27,000 seats. In fact, the industry forecasts that baseball clubs installing Beacon terminals in their stadiums this year will certainly include this function in the system.
Major League Baseball (MLB) in the U.S. started introducing ‘Beacon stadium’ at the end of 2013. According to a U.S. IT medium Tech Crunch, MLB Secretariat installed Apple’s ‘iBeacon’ in 28 of 30 baseball fields and started service at the end of 2013. With ‘iBeacon,’ it provides coupon issue and location information services.
Experts forecast that Beacon baseball stadium will develop into a video service to view the scenes viewers have missed. “To provide video service, we need to be capable of large-size data transmission. This is impossible with the current Beacon technology,” said the CEO of a company manufacturing Beacon terminal. “We will be able to provide such a service when this technology advances further in the future.”