A WORLD CONNECTED
As one of the firm's earliest European markets, Huawei's growth has been symbiotic with Portugal's digital transformation.
BIOGRAPHY
Chris Lu has been an executive manager at Huawei for 12 years. With a university background in management and economics and professional experience in global markets, he has deep insight into the ICT industry. He came to Europe in 2010 and worked at Huawei Germany and Huawei Netherlands before becoming the CEO of Huawei Portugal.What are Huawei's main operations and business lines in Portugal?
Portugal was one of the first countries for Huawei when it entered Europe. In 2005, we built Huawei's first 3G mobile network in Europe, in Madeira. Afterward, we continued to support the telecom operators to build 4G & 4.5G and Fiber-To-The-Home networks, as well as submarine cables providing best-in-class telecommunications service to Portuguese consumers and enterprises. In the future, we will work on a connected intelligent world with three features: All Things Sensing (sensing the physical world, mapping it to digital signals); All Things Connected (all data will go online); All Things Intelligent (big data and AI will power our new applications, making all things intelligent). These advances will not be possible without leading ICT technologies, as ICT infrastructure will be the foundation of our future intelligent world. This is where Huawei seeks to add value.
Huawei will launch the MateBook series in Portugal. What are your expectations from the launch?
Traditionally, the laptop business is a ready sales business because there is already enough competition; however, when we entered this segment, we brought in many new ideas and innovations because Huawei is an expert in connectivity and the cloud. We have given the laptop business a new concept. The MateBook X is a powerful laptop that also has an elegant appearance and excellent features. It is extremely slim and has a long battery life, making it extremely convenient for business people.
Can you provide further details on Huawei's project with Altice to deploy 5G networks in Portugal?
5G is a hot topic. Over the past few decades, we mainly sought to improve connectivity between people to people in the 2G, 3G, and 4G eras. With 5G, we are now extending that connectivity to machine to machine. This will bring significant changes in the way we live and work. 5G will bring ultra-high speed of up to 20Gbps, and its ultra-low latency will enable concepts such as autonomous driving. It will also allow us to connect millions of devices; however, it is important for the entire ecosystem to work together in creating a 5G environment. This includes telecom operators, solution providers like Huawei, and governmental entities like the Portuguese regulatory authority, ANACOM, as well as all different vertical and industries partners. Many enterprises will be able to combine their industry knowledge and data with ICT to reshape the way they produce and deliver their services. We are already working with our partners in Portugal and have launched the world's first narrow-band IoT smart meter in the utilities segment. We are also working on smart water meters, smart parking, smart agriculture, smart waste management, and more. All these first require an extremely fast 5G-infrastructure network, as well as excellent collaboration in the whole ecosystem.
Are you partnering with Portuguese companies to develop your smart solutions?
Yes; for example, the world's first narrow-band IoT smart meter is a design collaboration between Huawei and Janz, a Portuguese meter company that has many years of experience in the power meter field. Using Huawei's IoT smart chip, meters can be connected to service providers like EDP. They can constantly transmit power usage data and detect any power failures; therefore, the service provider can manage the energy supply in the most efficient way. All this came from the innovation we did with our local partners. We have connectivity and cloud experts and, moving forward, need to work with partners that have expertise in other industries, such as utilities, manufacturing, transportation, tourism, and others. It requires a great deal of collaboration in the whole ecosystem to make these ideas work. For example, at the moment cities around the world are becoming smart and embracing a digital society to drive economic competitiveness and sustainability for the future. The digital platform will be the engine powering the smart city development by enabling the integration of big data, cloud, edge computing, AI, and IoT technologies, which are the foundation of a smart city. The development of a smart city, namely the integration of all these digital technologies that improves city governance and intelligence, could be a highly complex project. However, Huawei's digital platform is highly efficient and open to facilitate collaboration with its Portuguese partner's ecosystem, as it will be they who customize the 'smart brain' based on each city's different development requirements.
A WORLD CONNECTED
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Focus: Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries
Making an Impact
Established in 1996, the Community of Portuguese Language Speaking Countries (CPLP) is a mechanism geared at linking and sharing the experience of Lusophone countries. Besides Portugal, this includes Brazil, Portugal, Cape Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, and São Tomé and Príncipe.
read articleFocus
Don’t Mind the Disruption
Having won the 2017 Eurovision Song Contest, Lisbon hosted the 2018 event. The relevance? Well, the contest began back in 1956 as a showcase not only of song, but of then-nascent live television broadcast technology. Today, Portugal is on the cutting edge of new technological developments.
read articleInterview
João Pedro Soeiro de Matos Fernandes , Minister , Environment and Energy Transition
The Ministry for the Environment and Energy Transition is focusing on decarbonizing the economy, valuing the territory and its habitats, and striving for a more circular use of the country's resources.
read articleInterview
António Braz Costa , General Manager, Portuguese Technological Centre for the Textile & Clothing Industries (CITEVE)
CITEVE has transformed the industry by promoting value addition, adopting the latest technologies, and ensuring the highest standards of environmental sustainability.
read articleFocus: New airport
Right Time to Seize Missed Opportunities
Portugal has seen its air traffic figures increase by as much as 80% in the last five years. As a result, its transportation infrastructure, and Lisbon's airport in particular, cannot cope with the rising numbers. A new airport project that will turn a military base into a commercial airport is now under discussion to bring much-needed relief to air traffic.
read articleInterview
Germano de Sousa , President, Grupo Germano de Sousa
Grupo Germano de Sousa's success can best be summed up by its understanding that science and medicine only really progress when technological development is combined with a deeper respect for human values and professional ethics.
read articleInterview
Isabel Capeloa Gil , Rector, Universidade Católica
Having pioneered the introduction of multiple subject areas to Portugal's tertiary education scene, Universidade Católica is aspiring to establish the country's first private medical school and introduce cutting-edge digital transformation.
read articleInterview
Carlos Guillén Gestoso , President, Escola Universitária de Ciências Empresariais, Saúde, Tecnologias e Engenharia & President, Atlantica University
Atlantica University differentiates through its company-university model and an MBA program in partnership with the University of California, Berkley, among other initiatives, to produce practical theoreticians.
read articleFocus: Public teaching staff
An Age-old Problem
Over a decade of austerity measures combined with an ageing population have seen the average age of the Portuguese public teaching staff progressively climb to one of the highest in the OECD. With frozen salaries, an extended retirement age, and precarious working conditions, today the sector faces one of its biggest challenge yet.
read articleInterview
Pedro Queiroz , General Manager, Federation of the Portuguese Agri-Food Industry (FIPA)
Portugal's economic recovery has seen its F&B sector emerge with annual turnovers of EUR16 billion, thanks to FIPA's undeterred focus on stable policies, excellent nutrition standards, and sustainability.
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