As the world’s greatest mobile event, Mobile World Congress attracts thousands of industry leaders, visionaries and press, all focused on one thing – the telecoms industry. But how does this impact the average consumer and their day-to-day? At this year’s show, this is exactly what Huawei is aiming to do – and on a massive scale
From healthcare and transport to 3D printing and the Internet of Things (IOT) the world is becoming increasingly advanced. And yet, at the same time, serious challenges need to be overcome in order to secure the future of the world and its inhabitants. Climate change and renewable energy sources are often seen as just political buzz words too easily thrown around but the need for a greener, more sustainable way of living is becoming all too apparent.
These are topics which most probably wouldn’t expect to be at the top of the agenda of the biggest event in the mobile calendar – Mobile World Congress. For Huawei, however, technology has no limits.
Unveiling its vision for the ICT world – Open ROADS for a Better Connected World – on the first day of the show, these topics were very much among those on Huawei’s agenda. According to the ICT solutions provider, there are five fundamenta l characteristics of the ultimate user experience: Real-time, On-demand, All-online, DIY and Social (ROADS).
With this “Open ROADS” approach, Huawei will foster an open industry ecosystem that enables agile innovations, advancing the ICT industry, as well as all social sectors in the digital age. In other words, even traditional industries will rely on ICT to keep evolving. This will see the ICT infrastructure evolve from a support system to a production system that creates innovation and value – therefore realizing business success.
The broad sector Huawei’s vision can be applied to was highlighted by John Frieslaar, Managing Principal Consultant, Global Business Consulting, at Huawei, at the first Speakers Corner session of this year’s show. This platform, located in Huawei’s booth in Hall 1, will see a total of 15 speakers take to the stage to speak about a variety of topics, including on-trend topics like 5G and Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Cloud transformation.
“To achieve open ROADS, there first needs to be a complete network transformation as many of the verticals which can be transformed with ICT to enable a better connected world will depend on portable devices,” said Frieslaar. “The world is changing and demand is now being seen for traditional areas to become smarter, for example, transportation, buildings, healthcare, water supply, waste management, education, energy and homes. This means that what operators have is a network of opportunity.”
In order to deliver these resources, Frieslaar pointed to three core technologies – SDN/NFV (Network Function Virtualization), 5G networks, and IoT/M2M.
He went on to showcase Huawei’s SoftCOM strategy which aims to help reconstruct the telecom industry from the perspectives of architecture, network, operation and service. By unleashing the full potential of SDN, NFV, cloud computing, and Internet-based o perations, SoftCOM will enable telecom carriers to realize comprehensive network evolution and business transformation, as well as further advance an open, interconnected, and innovative ecosystem to increase and better leverage the aggraded industry value.
“By placing ICT at the heart of complexity and at the heart of services, in other words, by putting it at the centre of the verticals previously mentioned, we not only deliver the required resources but we can also produce data,” continued Frieslaar. “This benefits people because it allows us to identify and understand value, which in turn enables service providers to deliver new and exciting applications. It is this which is the first step in opening the ROADS to a better connected world.”
Huawei’s vision of Open ROADS was also evident in other areas of its booth, which spreads over two levels and half of Hall 1. Among the different technologies and solutions on show were a number dedicated to realising Smart Cities, just one example of the many sectors that Huawei sees ICT becoming central to. This was demonstrated with a number of solutions to enable efficient indoor networks, for example, at airports and hotels, where there is a large number of people wanting to get online at once.
And, looking at the range of technologies on offer, Huawei is clearly well on the way to realising its better connected world.
