The Chinese vendor calls for joint efforts to narrow the connectivity gap in developing countries
HONG KONG – Rotating Huawei CEO Ken Hu told journalists during a press conference at Huawei’s Global Mobile Broadband Forum, which took place in Hong Kong this week, that attractive smartphones are a key piece of capitalizing on developing markets.
During the event, the Chinese ICT vendor unveiled its MBB 2020 Strategy, outlining a new mobile broadband blueprint for the next five years. Hu said the strategy stipulates that from now to 2020, Huawei aims to support 6.7 billion mobile broadband users, with a 1 gigabit-per-second access rate. The company also has the goal of supporting 1 billion connections for the mobile “Internet of Things.”
“We believe that 2015 is a critical juncture. The industry will face dramatic changes over the next five years,” Hu said, adding that it will be key for the overall telecom industry to improve the user experience in the provision of telecom services in the coming years.
Hu believes that in order to embrace the huge opportunities for the industry in the next five years, stakeholders need to work in two directions. “One direction is technical innovation and the other direction is innovation in business models,” he said. “We hope to see new cooperation between telecoms firms and vertical industries.” Huawei is currently working with a number of verticals including transportation, education, manufacturing and energy, among others.
The executive also affirmed that Huawei sees significant challenges and opportunities in emerging markets as a lot needs to be done in the coming years to narrow the connectivity gap in these developing regions. “We have to make efforts from a multiple perspective. We have to focus on networks, devices, applications and spectrum allocation. We should increase the technical innovation of the networks and it is also key to make improvements in spectrum utilization efficiency.”
Hu also noted that a higher availability of attractive smartphones and richer applications in emerging markets will be crucial to improve connectivity in the medium term.
According to Huawei, more than 1 billion people lack access to mobile telephony services and 4 billion do not have access to Internet services, mostly in emerging markets. Hu also called on regulators in less-developed markets to make additional spectrum available to improve mobile connectivity in these regions.
