Chen Lifang, Senior Vice President of Huawei, emphasized that connecting all things is the basis of everything else, and is the cornerstone of an intelligent world, in her speech in Unlocking New Economic Value Summit during Mobile Congress World 2018.

February 27, 2018

4 Min Read
Chen Lifang: Connecting All Things Is the Basis of Everything Else

Chen Lifang, Senior Vice President of Huawei, emphasized that connecting all things is the basis of everything else, and is the cornerstone of an intelligent world in her speech in Unlocking New Economic Value Summit during Mobile Congress World 2018.

“Over the past 30 years, information technology has greatly changed how we live and work, and smartphones and mobile Internet have reshaped our lives. Over the next 30 years, information technology will enable businesses and the entire world to go digital, creating incredible market space.”

Therefore, Huawei is committed to bringing digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. That said, we plan to invest 15 to 20 billion US dollars in research and innovation each year to make key technological breakthroughs. We also plan to invest 10 to 20 billion US dollars to improve our marketing, sales, and service system, in order to better serve our customers and build a positive industry ecosystem.”

Chen shared the insights with the ICT executive teams from Zambia, Mexico, Brazil, Saudi Arabia and Kenya.

First of all, there would be a top-level design and a national plan to direct investment and attract the best talent.

Here are some examples of this: The Indonesian government has launched the Indonesian Broadband Plan (IBP). This plan aims to deliver fixed network access and mobile voice and data services to its people by using optical fiber technologies. The government of Malaysia has also been placing great emphasis on ICT development. Over just three years, the digital economy has grown to make up 17% of its total GDP. This makes it one of the world's highest ranking countries in this regard. In Saudi Arabia, the national ICT plan – Saudi Vision 2030 – has now been rolled out. This plan aims to develop the country's non-oil sectors. Finally, Germany's Industry 4.0 and the Made in China 2025 initiatives have been designed to make the manufacturing industry intelligent by using ICT technologies. From these examples, we can see that national planning for ICT infrastructure is essential for a country to improve its core competencies.

Secondly is to lower the barrier of digital transformation and provide support to major industries via industry policy support. Nigeria and Thailand provide subsidies for ICT infrastructure construction in rural areas. Italy and Ireland encourage carriers and electric companies to work together and lay out optical fibers during the construction of power grids. Saudi Arabia allows carriers to mount sites on streetlamps, and Mexico encourages the reuse of site locations. Germany requires the installation of optical fibers in all new houses and roads. The country also allows carriers to use infrastructure such as streetlamp poles and sewer pipes during optical network deployment. India has streamlined its approval for right of way to reduce the approval time from six months to two months. All of these initiatives have undoubtedly helped to greatly reduce network rollout costs.

Last but not least, to achieve leapfrog development by adopting the most advanced technologies and partnering with the best companies. Of particular note, it is easier to successfully adopt new technologies in regions with relatively low levels of ICT development. Because they have no historical burden on their shoulders.

Being an ICT industry leader and leading ICT technology provider, Huawei has helped countries such as Kenya, Tanzania, and Ghana address the issue of having no banking branches in rural areas with the deployment of Mobile Money solution in Africa. The inclusive financial services have enabled over 70% of local adults and 2% of homes to move out of extreme poverty, contributing 1.8 percentage points to GDP growth. Huawei also developed the RuralStar base station solution for rural areas in Africa. As of today, the solution has been serving 80 million users globally. This year, 40,000 new upgraded base stations will be deployed. After these stations have been deployed, the number of people this solution will provide network access to will increase to 180 million. Using wireless technologies,

We are also providing the most affordable home broadband services to people in Mongolia, the Philippines, South Africa, and Sri Lanka. It has taken us less than a year to provide broadband connections for 10% and 5% of homes in Mongolia and Morocco, respectively. Saudi Arabia and Egypt have fully utilized the bandwidth of their legacy copper networks, while India and Thailand have greatly boosted spectrum utilization through cloud-based management.

In 2018, we will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of Huawei. With openness, collaboration, and shared success in mind, we would like to work with all of the ministers, guests, and partners here today to contribute even more to the digital transformation and economic development of all countries.

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