Huawei: In Trinidad and Tobago for Trinidad and Tobago

FOR two decades Huawei has been in the Caribbean and Latin American region, and for 17 years it has been in TT, working in the background and assisting Trinidad and Tobago with connectivity and technology. The Chinese-based company has helped with building infrastructure, introducing the nation to new technologies such as 5G and providing products to make government and commercial entities more agile and flexible in connection, education and communication.

In an interview with Tudor John, Huawei’s enterprise business director responsible for government and private-sector integration and corporate communications manager Tricia Henry,Business Day was told Huawei’s main goal in TT is to help build the infrastructure and and provide the technology in the commercial and public sectors to bring TT into the future.

“We have been in the Latin American and Caribbean region for over 20 years. We have 20 offices in the region. We have supply centres, service centres and training centres. Our local offices are staffed by local people,” Henry said. “We like to say here that we are in TT for TT.”

A solution provider

Huawei told Business Day it has invested close to $1 billion a year in procurement in the region. In an interview at Huawei's office at Queen's Park Savannah, Port of Spain, John said the company's goal is not just to sell its technology but to support the area it works in and to build an ecosystem that supports technological growth.

“Huawei is not just an infrastructure provider, but a solution provider. For us it’s not just about the bits and bytes on the boxes but the customer experience,”

While Huawei’s core purpose is enterprise and infrastructure, it has partners that specialise in different areas. John said Huawei added ten additional partners this year alone, as well as two new engineers to assist in providing a complete customer experience.

“If you have Huawei hardware, you want to be able to call on our local offices as that first line of support and not some international number. That’s our business model – full local support. If there is some form of support that is not offered locally, then that is our defined path to escalation.”

Huawei’s business can be separated into three parts – its carrier business, its consumer business and its enterprise business.

Through its carrier business, Huawei assists with the infrastructure, which is at the foundation of digital transformation and designing networks for service providers. It is through this business that Huawei partners with telecommunications companies to develop its networks to provide its services.

Huawei also partners with resellers – stores which buy Huawei devices and resell them – for its consumer business. Through resellers the company provides its top-tier smartphones, tablets and digital watches for consumers.

The enterprise area, John said, is seeing the most growth, not just in TT but globally. Huawei partners with the public and private sectors, providing frameworks for connectivity.

“Our connectivity projects range from working with service providers to roll out fibre optic networks throughout the length and breadth of TT, as well as from a government perspective, to interconnect different ministries,” John said.

He said Huawei’s business in TT has seen growth of about nine per cent, driven by increases in sales in the enterprise area.

“We have seen more adoption between government and ISPs with our data communication products. So the growth in TT has been very encouraging,” Tudor said.

Supporting local

Huawei’s support goes beyond fibre optics and other forms of hardware. With one of its more popular commercial devices, the Idea Hub, and several initiatives that enhance the talent in the ICT space, Huawei also makes a significant contribution to supporting the people and systems in TT.

John said Huawei would also partner with other companies to provide customers with tailor-made solutions

“We will provide access points, switches and so on, but if you are looking for an education-specific application like a learning management system, that is where we would bring in our partners so we can provide that, given the customer requirements. So it's not just providing the technology, but it is understanding what the customer needs and providing it to them.”

Huawei also spoke about its supporting initiatives such as the “Seeds for the Future” programme – which will be seeing its eighth cohort of students being given access to technology training.

The programme exposes tertiary students in STEM disciplines to global knowledge and expertise in ICT.

This year, the initiative will run from October 9-16 after which successful applicants from TT will go to Costa Rica to be part of a larger convention with 80 of the top STEM university students from Latin America and the Caribbean.

This year there will also be additional elements including mentorship from Huawei’s headquarters incentives for the top three selected students and an eight-day programme of offline activities.

John added that its smart office productivity tool – the Idea Hub – provided the means to assist not only private-sector businesses but
government institutions, including schools, government offices and sectors of the security services.

“At the time there was a need for remote connectivity,” John said. “People needed something that would help them connect remotely and collaborate. So we have seen an increased demand for these devices through the government.”

John said there are ministries with as many as five Idea Hubs, and schools with over 20 devices. The Idea Hub comes with cameras, noise cancelling microphones, capacity for internet browsing and digital sharing of information as well as capacity to act as an access point. It can also act as a wireless projector to share information in real time.

“All in all, it provides all the devices that you would typically need in a conference room,” John said.

Huawei also worked with TSTT to launch the region’s first fixed 5G site in the Phoenix Industrial Park in 2019. Henry explained that the network would not be for commercial use, but would be used to streamline processes in manufacturing and other processes.

“If you have a factory and you want to do wireless robots on your floor you can actually use 5G because the latency is very low, almost zero. So that means no lag time.”

Huawei is trustworthy

Addressing questions surrounding security, Huawei said in a statement it was best to let the facts speak for themselves.

“For over 30 years, Huawei has provided network products and solutions to over 1,500 telecom operators in more than 170 countries and regions around the world. More than three billion people worldwide use or benefit from products or solutions by Huawei which help to deliver stable telecom services,” Huawei said.

It said that while Huawei has been labelled as a security threat by some countries, they have not been able to provide any evidence. Huawei said the lasting trust that its customers has speaks volumes.

“Since 2011, John Suffolk, the former chief information officer in the UK government, has served as Huawei’s current senior vice president and global cyber security officer,” Huawei said in a statement. “Under his leadership Huawei has been able to establish a sustainable and trustworthy global cyber security assurance system across all aspects of our business. We have integrated assurance processes into all business processes across research and development, supply chain, sales and marketing, project delivery and technical services. This is a fundamental requirement of quality management at Huawei.”

Huawei also established a cybersecurity verification lab which works independently from other business operations within the company. The statement said the lab does security testing on its products and provides customers with verification reports that detail the quality and security capabilities of Huawei products.

“Cyber security remains our company’s top priority and, as a closely watched company subject to extensive regulatory oversight in numerous countries across the globe, we will continue to actively improve our engineering processes and risk management systems.”