‘Shared prosperity enabled by trust in technology, open collaboration’

Information and communication technology is vital to societal well-being and economic recovery, assert experts, academia, and economists from around the world.

Among them are Huawei’s Executive Director of the Board and President of the Carrier Business Group, Ryan Ding, international investor, Jim Rogers, among others.

They stressed this at the second annual Huawei’s TrustInTech Summit, held recently.

The summit focused on new challenges the world has faced in 2020 and emphasised the need to embrace open collaboration, as well as the call to defeat the unnecessary fear of adopting new technologies.

Huawei Enterprise’s digital transformation expert, Edwin Diender, explained how 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, and cloud computing pushed for faster drug screening and diagnosis, intelligent monitoring, remote working, and education during the pandemic.

“Politics should stay away from technical issues. We need to remain fair and open to drive technological cooperation. Industry cooperation is not a zero-sum game. If an isolated approach is adopted now, while new technology is unlocking social and business value at a faster rate, the victim will not be one company,” Ding said.

Another expert, Stephanie Lynch-Habib, sharing how 5G’s roll-out in 2020 brought over 100 5G networks in 47 countries, said, “5G will influence consumer-oriented industries such as e-commerce, as well as boosting innovative services like virtual reality and augmented reality. Standard network slicing models and edge computing will provide high reliability, low latency, high throughput, and service customisation.”

Also speaking during the summit was Huawei Carrier Business Group Chief Technology Officer, Paul Scanlan, who called 2020 a ‘Sputnik’ moment. 

He said, “Similar to how the first man-made satellite Sputnik was successfully launched in 1957, bringing humanity into the age of space exploration, as 5G matured in 2020, everything changed.

“The industry began to accelerate 5G adoption, offering spectrum discounts, innovating business models, and driving industry transformation. That’s never happened in the last 10 years.”