Huawei seeks partnerships for Africa economic growth
This would be done through enhancing mobile broadband, the leading global information and communication technology solutions provider has announced at the GSMA Mobile 360 Africa in Dar-es-Salaam, Tanzania.
The company stressed its commitment to creating value for communities by collaborating with operators to support them maximize network assets and deploy wireless broadband to the home to enhance Mobile Broadband (MBB) penetration and narrow the digital divide between urban and rural areas.
Extending MBB coverage across African countries will help to alleviate poverty, improve healthcare and education and expand financial inclusion.
The GSMA predicts over the next five years there will be 720 million smartphones in use and up to 60 percent MBB connections in African markets. The enhanced connectivity will result in the increase of national competitiveness, innovation capacity and overall productivity.
The main challenges the industry faces in expanding coverage in both rural and urban areas include high expenditure, difficulties in site acquisition, high infrastructure cost and long return on investment.
Dr Mohamed Madkour, Huawei’s Vice President of Wireless Networks Marketing and Head of Global Demand Generation, said besides optimum network solution for different deployment scenarios in Africa, the company identified three business and industry alliances.
These are content aggregation, site ecosystem alliance and fibre to the home alliance.
“We are very optimistic in terms of opportunities in Africa despite all of the challenges that have been mentioned. So telecos just need to take actions and deploy the right business solutions in order to capture those opportunities, Mohamed said.
Huawei’s approach is to support operators through optimizing total cost of operation, shortening ROI and enhancing site efficiency.
– CAJ News
