Today’s ‘ROADS to New Growth’ summit at HUAWEI CONNECT 2017 highlighted the latest progress by telecom carriers in finding new growth areas in the industry. Industry thought leaders, leading carriers, Huawei and its partners, also discussed how cloud and network synergies can help carriers play to their strengths and support the digital transformation of vertical industries.
In IoT, carriers core strengths lie in their superior connectivity, platforms, and ecosystems. Carrier NB-IoT networks have been used for smart metering, smart parking, smart street lamps, smart agriculture, and bicycle sharing. Looking forward, carriers will create more growth by making use of their advantages of ubiquitous networks and platforms to deliver a diverse range of services based on data analytics. Unlike OTT service providers, carriers have the unique advantage of being able to coordinate cloud and network when they develop B2B services. Carriers are developing one-stop, converged cloud services that will satisfy company demand for cloudification, private lines, and communication services. Cloud services will help improve the service experience and cut down the capital outlays required to customers so that carriers can expand into new markets.
Developing cloud, IoT, and video services present not only technological hurdles but also industry and ecosystem concerns. HUAWEI CONNECT 2017 is also a conference for the industry and ecosystem. t the summit, other carriers also discussed how they hoped that they could find ways to work with partners to build a healthy and harmonious ecosystem. They aim to use their strengths in ICT infrastructure to support the digitization of other industries and embark on new roads to growth.
“To succeed in B2B, carriers must first transform their business model from helping enterprise customers own assets to offering them services, and from one-off resale to delivering continuous services.” said Yue Kun, Vice President of Global Marketing and Solution Sales, Huawei Carrier BG. Cloud will be the platform and portal for carrier B2B services. Via the cloud, carriers will be able to develop entirely new blue ocean markets in industry, government, and enterprises with services like IoT, video, communications, computing, and storage.
Chang Wenzhuo, General Manager of Product Development Center, and Deputy General Manager of Marketing, Guangdong Branch, China Unicom, said, “Cloud and network are one and the same. China Telecom will leverage cloud-and-network synergy as we enter the cloud services space, and will work with our partners to build an ecosystem for smart cloud-network services.”
Hiroki Taketsuna, Senior Director of SoftBank’s ICT Innovation and Network Service Division, said: “SoftBank’s next-generation enterprise networking solution, based on SD-WAN, supports traffic optimization, robust service deployment, and end-to-end security. Our solution can help enterprises go digital seamlessly.”
