Huawei staged its second annual TrustInTech Summit, which was attended by ICT industry experts, academia and economists from around the world.
Attendees and speakers included Huawei’s Executive Director of the Board and President of the Carrier Business Group, Ryan Ding, international investor Jim Rogers, GSMA CMO Stephanie Lynch-Habib, and others.
Centred around the new challenges the world faced in 2020, the Summit discussed ICT’s critical role as the key digital infrastructure to support societal wellbeing and economic recovery.
Given the rising trend of technology decoupling, the Summit emphasized the need to embrace open collaboration, as well as the call to defeat the unnecessary fear of adopting new technologies.
In 2020, ICT played an instrumental role in resuming work and production during the pandemic. Meanwhile, 2020 has witnessed the exponential growth of 5G business applications.
At the virtual conference, STL Partners co-founder Chris Barraclough stressed the transformative role of 5G in manufacturing, energy, and healthcare sectors.
Huawei Enterprise’s digital transformation expert Edwin Diender also concurred, explaining the role of how 5G, AI, big data, and cloud computing pushed for faster drug screening and diagnosis, intelligent monitoring, and remote working and education during the pandemic.
GSMA CMO Stephanie Lynch-Habib shared that 5G’s rollout in 2020 brought over 100 5G networks in 47 countries, and some regions are leading in making 5G a mature application.
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 customization.
“Our working groups are continually supporting and enhancing global standards,” stressed Lynch-Habib.
Many guests at the event commented on early adoption and major technological breakthroughs by saying there has always been a mistrust and fear of new things.
For example, during the Industrial Revolution in the 19th century, as there was fear for automated production, factories were destroyed.
As the events in 2020 led to more isolation and nationalism, there’s been a rise against transnational cooperation, and more countries are closing their doors and decoupling from each other over technology.
“Anybody taking a unilateral approach to anything, certainly to technology and economics, are going to have problems,” said international investor Jim Rogers. “Foreign policy should be around opening. We need to avoid protectionism, especially in technology.”
At the conclusion of the event, Ryan Ding, Huawei’s Executive Director of the Board and President of the Carrier Business Group, emphasized that an open and trusted ecosystem is required for everyone to share the prosperity brought by technology.
To do so, the ICT industry needs to continue adopting unified technical and security standards.
Given the current complex geopolitical environment, he stressed, “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.”
