The next decade brings an unprecedented level of efficiency in all that we do. Our tomorrow’s world would never be the same as today; technological innovations are disrupting every aspect of life for the better. It requires us to get well prepared to embrace the new world which is being shaped by mobile connectivity.
Tech-savvies are working round-the-clock and have been achieving miraculously in transforming our world. The good thing is, they allow us to experience tomorrow’s world right today—that is what one may feel at Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2022 (MWC Barcelona 2022) organized by the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA). The sessions were held between Feb 28, 2022 and Mar 3, 2022.
GSMA Director General and Board Member Mats Granryd in his keynote speech had this to tell his audience: “mobile connectivity has massive enablement.” He enumerated its application from automotive, aviation, manufacturing, financial services, education, entertainment, Meta verse to what have you.
Granryd also brought a concrete example before his audience. “Take climate action for instance, during COP26 I called on business leaders and policymakers to use technology to achieve net-zero by 2050 and limit global warming to 1.5°C.”
The conference he mentioned was held at the SEC Centre [Scottish Event Campus] in Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom last year between 31 October and 13 November 2021. Granryd made it clear that the technology he was talking about in Glasgow already exists today. It is worth noticing his remarks that the technologies are very underused by energy-intensive industries like energy, transport, buildings and manufacturing.
“If we use mobile technology in those four sectors, we will have less global emissions.”
The intervention with mobile connectivity would enable to achieve the equivalent of 40 percent of the total required reduction, he added.
“It is the same as decommissioning 2,700 coal-fired power plants.”
The cosmopolitan city, Barcelona, hosted Olympic Games in 1992, almost the same time that IBM’s Simon, the first smartphone, was invented. This year, the city has brought the future tech-disruptors from global mobile operators, device manufacturers, technology providers, and vendors, to content owners under the same roof.
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. is among the major exhibitors at the event. Simply put: the Huawei booth at the hall takes the lion’s share of the entire floor under the theme: ‘Lighting up the future’. The displays and their titles speak volumes about the tech world we are living and the one awaiting us in the next few years. ‘Intelligent Campus’ for instance says it all. Research, teaching-learning and other activities of the academic areas can optimize their resources and manage to ensure quality through using technology. The same is true for industrial transformation and full-stack data center that aims to increase efficiency in the production and handling of big data respectively. Particularly, the 5G technology of Huawei has brought a range of benefits in saving energy, environmental protection, boosting employees’ efficiency and the likes. With little or no wastage of resources, one can furnish smart offices, smart homes, health & fitness centers and the like.
Let’s share with you one of the awe-inspiring products of Huawei. You can see more at www.engadget.com.
“The company unveiled a new Mate Book laptop, a Mate Station all-in-one PC, a Pix Lab laser printer, new speakers and a tablet called the Mate Pad Paper.
The most intriguing of these is the Mate Pad Paper, a 10.3-inch e-ink tablet with some particularly thin bezels. Its texturized paper-like screen is easy to read in both sunlight and lowlight, and displays not only text and still images, but videos as well. It also works with Huawei’s M-Pencil so you can write on it, and the company’s custom software allows you to simultaneously read and write in a split-screen view. An onboard mic lets you record audio while taking notes, while a fingerprint sensor in the power button enables convenient logins.”
The company familiarizes participants Huawei with what it calls latest wireless products and solutions as well as newly released Intelligent RAN architecture.
Gann Bin, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Wireless Solution at a keynote speech titled: “Innovation for 5Gigaverse Society” had this to say: “5G’s large-bandwidth and multi-antenna technologies have brought tangible benefits. But we do not stop here; instead, we move ahead and continue to innovate in these two areas.”
What is more, Huawei IT Product Line president Peter Zhou also introduced Huawei’s One Storage strategy and some new data infrastructure offerings to global carriers. “Huawei strengthens its One Storage strategy to enable storage resource pooling, intelligent management, and interconnection with multiple clouds, he remarked.
To cut a long story short, the event sends a clear signal to any spectators of the event that our lives are changing and still it will continue to change for the better in all aspects in the years to come. The question is: to what extent are we prepared in Africa and/or Ethiopia to adapt and put to use such technologies?
Huawei Northern Africa & Mediterranean Region Vice President in Charge of Public Relations Adnane BEN HALIMA addresses the question this way.
Knowledge/skills transfer
Our aim is to have as many people skilled in digital tech as possible in the country to help the ecosystem move forward and create new opportunities as well as build the future for the country. We are doing this through partnerships with various universities, and also with the government to share new technology like AI, 5G, big data, Cloud etc.
The 5G world
We are talking about broadband connectivity. That means we give time to people to use the internet. 5G is one of the tools; it is not the only one available. There is fixed broadband working with fiber, even for the 4G there is 4G plus. It is the government that issues the license for the 5G to the operator and then the operator will select the vendors to deploy on the network, at that time we will do our job— it is the country that should define the timing to launch the 5G network.
And the kind of decision should be based on some pre-requisites. One of the prerequisites is the availability of the 5G devices. If you launch the 5G network but people cannot have access to 5G devices, obviously they will not use the network. So, there is a threshold of mobile phone 5G penetration which is estimated to be around 15% to 20 %, when you reach this penetration rate, it is time to launch the 5G.
The 5G development worldwide is ongoing. The cost of the 5G devices is still high as compared to countries in Africa. But this year and by the next year, it will be where we can see 5G devices with affordable price and then things will be ready to offer the services in countries.
At MWC
Our biggest focus at MWC was on technologies that provide a high bandwidth based on mobile technologies like 4G and 5G and fixed ones technologies, we also emphasized a lot on the cloud sovereignty, as countries need to be smart on how to deal with data, particularly data for citizens. That is why countries need to have national cloud and data centers to protect this. We also build a national digital economy based on this.
The rosy future in Ethiopia
Home to over a hundred million people, with the youth making up the majority of the population, Ethiopia’s potential for the digital market is beyond doubt. The ever-expanding sectors including manufacturing and services have a voracious appetite for tech products that trim cost, boost employees’ efficiency, integrate green value, increase revenue and the like.
The government of Ethiopia’s recent decision in partially privatizing Ethio Telecom, by selling 40 percent of the equity share capital of the company, mainly aims to pull best practices in terms of operation, infrastructural management and introducing next-generation technological capabilities. The wheels of the tech-sector are already in motion, and seem to accelerate even more in the years to come. Cheers!
BY WORKU BELACHEW
THE ETHIOPIAN HERALD FRIDAY 18 MARCH 2022
