Andy Purdy, chief security officer at Huawei USA, noted that the company has been increasing its focus on the provision of digital solutions for verticals
While the telecoms industry, at large, is pinning great hopes on public and private 5G for enterprises, many mobile operators still don’t yet have concrete examples of how to monetize 5G-based enterprise services at scale. But Huawei, working with operator partners in China and elsewhere, claims to have real-world examples of how to make enterprise 5G pay. Even in the face of challenging trade restrictions, Huawei has invested heavily in R&D and B2B partnerships around the world to monetize 5G for digital transformation in major industries such as logistics, transportation, mining, agriculture, and healthcare. In a recent session during RCR Wireless’ Private Networks Global Forum 2023, a group of executives and analysts discussed how Huawei has helped mobile operators to monetize 5G services – with lessons in how to fund, design, and scale enterprise 5G for the whole telecoms sector.
Andy Purdy, Chief Security Officer at Huawei USA, noted that the company has been increasing its focus on the provision of digital solutions for verticals. “We have been adjusting to the trade restrictions on the ability of American companies to sell to us by heavily investing in R&D, and ramping up our efforts to try to have a stronger focus on bringing automated intelligent technology to industries such as ports, oil and gas, healthcare, digital finance, rail and aviation,” said Purdy.
According to Jon Arnold, principal at J Arnold & Associates, telecom operators will have to adopt new approaches to participate in the deployment of 5G networks in industry environments. “The telcos have had a very good run migrating from 3G to 4G, where most of the business came from voice services and was primarily consumer-centric. But 5G is much more transformational and a much bigger opportunity for enterprise. This is a very different kind of proposition, [where] the telcos just don’t get the business, because they’re the incumbents. They may get the business for the connectivity. But like everything else in this digital transformation universe, now, the value has shifted from hardware to software, and now basically to who is the most effective cloud operator. So the telcos have to either reinvent themselves along that path, or be more open to partnerships with vendors,” Arnold said.
Commenting about the geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and China regarding the role of Huawei, Robert Johnson, president of the Institute for New Economic Thinking opined that the U.S. has adopted a more cautious position in the 5G field as the country is not at the forefront in terms of 5G development and innovation.
“I think that 5G has gone beyond much of what the Americans are producing. And they are raising the flag of security to try and buy time. And I think this is a mistake. I think when you rise to the challenge of competition, you join the innovative dynamic, and you can move forward. When you play these games of resistance, you run the risk of falling further behind. I think the Europeans are focused on that common good, but receptive to things from all other places. I think the United States and China right now have reversed roles with regard to 5G, and the U.S. is now the protectionist and China is the … cutting edge innovator,” he said, adding, “America should get back in the saddle. And try not to surpass but try to learn from and emulate, so that they are at the cutting edge going forward as they had been for many years.”
Purdy highlighted that Huawei’s emphasis has been on the idea of 5G to business applications that integrate artificial intelligence cloud and video capabilities. “So this work enhanced by R&D is why we were able to grow our enterprise business 30% in 2022, over the previous the previous year. We did this helping carriers to connect with different kinds of technologies, so they can have a consistent platform and not have lagging points in the platform,” he explained. Purdy also noted that millimeter-wave fixed wireless access, cable to the office, cable to the home, Wi-Fi-6 and soon, Wi-Fi-7, are capabilities that the carriers “need to feel that they have the capability to get to the place where they can take advantage of some of these opportunities.”