Huawei Technologies reports growth opportunities for year ahead

Speaking today from Samena's Broadband Wireless Summit in Beirut, Ihab Ghattas, Assistant President, Middle East Region, Huawei Technologies, said:

"Previously the telecommunications industry has grown and changed as a result of customer needs, technology changes and the emergence of new business models. This year the global financial turmoil adds a new dimension to an already complicated picture and deepens the existing challenges. The ability of the operators and their partners to rapidly seize new opportunities, anticipate customer demands and be able to quickly modify strategies and adjust business models will determine the ongoing success of the telecommunications industry."

Emerging markets like the Middle East have become a major factor in industry expansion, but decreasing ARPU (average revenue per user) will act as stimulation for creative solutions. Uncovering these opportunities, providing products, services and support to operators as they deal with the emerging trends and successfully managing the impacts will be the key to future success.

"During the last ten years, an information world has taken shape; the rise of broadband has brought about a massive social change to the point where people who use the web a lot often wonder how they ever managed without it. This trend will continue in the Middle East and over the next few years, the spread of high-speed, low-cost, anywhere connectivity will be the driving force for the telecom industry's development," said Ghattas.

In February this year at the GSMA Mobile World Congress in Barcelona Huawei unveiled a series of innovations that would continue to propel the telecommunications industry in 2009. Highlights include:
• Demonstrating Huawei's first Android-powered smart phone.
• Introduction to the smallest wireless modem in the world, the i-Mo. The size of a small key chain that fits in the pocket.
• Establishing partnership with Intel Corporation the launch of Huawei's new WiMAX Interoperability Testing laboratory in Beijing to continue to enhance the speed of interoperability and the delivery of commercial-ready WiMAX devices.
• The availability of Huawei's end-to-end 40G Internet Protocol and optical transport solution - and industry first, enabling carriers to provide more reliable and diverse IP-based ultra broadband services.
• Huawei's number one ranking in the world for new commercial contracts won in UMTS/HSPA, representing 40.4% of the total number of new contracts signed globally in 2008.
• Demonstration of the world's first unified frequency-division duplex and time-division duplex long-term evolution solution helping operators to deliver the highest quality mobile broadband networks at a significantly reduced cost.
• Huawei's three femtocell solutions were chosen as winners of the prestigious iF Design Award.
• Unveiling of new products from Huawei's IPTime solution portfolio, designed to remove bandwidth bottlenecks in mobile broadband services and allows operators to implement end-to-end IP mobile transport more effectively.

"Despite difficult times, there are reasons to be optimistic and innovation is the key to recovery. The telecommunications industry in the Middle East will continue to invest in infrastructure and the roll out of cost-effective services and at Huawei we will pave the way for network convergence and evolution by developing innovative solutions that enable operators to simplify and unify their networks for future mobile service demand," added Ghattas.