ZTE Corporation (0763.HK / 000063.SZ), a major international provider of 
telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile 
internet, today announced that ZTE's Chief Development Officer, Cui Li, has 
delivered a speech on Embracing a New Era with Digital Service Providers at the 
ZTE Global Analyst Conference.

With increasing demands for data services, many public cloud providers and 
telecom operators are vigorously making cross-border innovations, expecting to 
seize the new opportunities at the early stages of a new round of digital 
economy surge. ZTE believes that to further consolidate digital foundations in 
combination with the characteristics of digital services will effectively help 
operators realize the transformation from traditional communication service 
providers to future digital service providers, while also speeding up the 
digital and intelligent transformation of society. 

"ZTE expects to consolidate digital foundations with enhanced network 
capabilities, expanded digital capabilities, and digital transformation of 
industries, thereby helping operators to realize digital transformation, better 
embrace the digital era and stay ahead in future competitions, while creating 
value and winning the future together," said Ms. Cui.  

Digital transformation is an inevitable trend and enterprises need to take the 
initiatives

"Digital transformation is now an inevitable trend. Taking the lead in digital 
transformation will definitely bring us digital dividends and competitive 
edges," Ms. Cui stressed. "The era of digital services will be the beginning of 
a new round of competition for the incremental market."

From the perspective of the macro environment, firstly, the digital economy has 
already become one of the major driving forces for high-quality economic growth 
and we need to follow the trend. Secondly, the increasing uncertainties in the 
global environment are forcing enterprises to enhance their capabilities to 
guard against risks. Thirdly, people are more aware of the importance of 
environmental protection and sustainable development, and digital 
transformation is the key for major countries to achieving carbon neutrality 
goals.

And from the perspective of the market, as traditional communication services 
have hit a revenue ceiling, the digital service market characterized by 
cloud-network synergy is gradually opening up. 

According to Ms. Cui's analysis, firstly, in the post-pandemic era, smart home 
has become a new scenario that integrates work, education, and entertainment. 
The development of smart home applications, such as 4K/8K videos and VR/AR, 
will drive the rapid growth of the market. Secondly, intelligent Internet of 
everything (IIoE) contributes to the explosive growth of connected terminals. 
The processing of massive data poses higher requirements for network capability 
and ubiquitous computing power. 

Thirdly, regarding cost-effective integrated ICT solutions, instead of building 
data centers by themselves, enterprise customers are more willing to turn to 
digital service providers (DSPs) for professional integrated services at lower 
costs, so that they can focus more on business improvement. Also, providing 
integrated services for the digital transformation of traditional industries 
will bring new growth opportunities for operators.  

With the great room for market growth of digital services, Ms. Cui believes 
that the transformation of traditional operators from communication service 
providers to digital service providers is a necessary option to enhance their 
competitiveness.

From the perspective of technological development, the emerging new 
technologies and evolving digital technologies in recent years have laid a 
solid foundation for digital services, for instance, dual-gigabit network 
access based on 5G and gigabit optical networks, distributed computing based on 
cloud-edge-terminal synergy, cloud native, digital twin and AI applications, 
and Zero Trust Architecture for data security and cybersecurity.

Among so many technologies, how should operators make choices and effectively 
apply them? Cui Li believes that the decisive factor is "the value that a 
technology can create." She suggests following three principles. The first 
principle means value creation for customers, indicating to focus on technology 
integration, capability decoupling, ecological openness, and fundamental 
security. The second refers to Forward-Looking Deployment, which means facing 
the rapid technology evolution and gaining competitive edges in future key 
technologies. The third is Differential Development, which means giving full 
play to the advantages in main business and refraining from the don'ts, so as 
to play a key role in the value ecosystem in the future.

Integrating networks, clouds, and industries assists operators in staying ahead 
in future competitions

After analyzing the macro environment, market and technological trend, Ms. Cui 
said, "operators should start to transform from CSPs to DSPs right now. With 
their existing advantages, operators can build a solid digital foundation 
integrating networks, clouds, and industries, thus staying ahead in future 
competitions."

Networks are the basis for the Internet of Everything, while distributed cloud 
can provide computing power anytime and anywhere. Combining the big data 
technology with networks and distributed cloud, we can achieve data collection 
and integration. Furthermore, we can realize high-dimensional perception and 
intelligent decision-making through AI technology. Regarding industries, the 
key is to provide customer-oriented digital services tailored to various 
verticals. In other words, to satisfy the requirements of different customers, 
we should flexibly integrate the underlying capabilities of networks and 
clouds, to provide cost-effective, user-friendly digital services. That makes 
all the difference.

"With network-cloud-industry synergy, operators can effectively drive the 
digital transformation of verticals as well as the ToC, ToH, and ToB business, 
thereby taking a leading position in the digital era," stressed Ms. Cui. 

Enhance network capabilities. We keep emphasizing the improvement of network 
capabilities, namely, to explore resources and reduce costs. Specifically, we 
should seek continuous innovations and breakthroughs in ultimate experience and 
efficiency.

Ultimate experience focuses on "exploring resources". In order to make success 
in the market, it's essential to bring customers brand new experiences. For 
example, individual consumers expect full network coverage with fast speed 
while home users look for better experience grounded on multi-screen display, 
intelligent applications, and immersive interactions, and industry customers 
require large uplink bandwidth, URLLC applications, as well as 
small-granularity hard slicing. 

Most importantly, customers are willing to pay for these brand new experiences 
that bring them greater value. 

As for ultimate efficiency, the key is cost reduction. We strive to make 
continuous breakthroughs in spectral, operational, and power efficiency, to 
lower costs and improve overall efficiency.

Next is to expand digital capabilities. It's suggested that operators focus on 
optimal resource efficiency and edge-driven applications to promote the 
expansion of digital capabilities in the new era.

As we can see, enterprises are advancing digitalization of production to 
improve efficiency. To meet requirements such as ultra-low latency and data 
security, a large amount of data will be processed at the edge. Therefore, the 
edge will become a field with fierce competition for innovation. 

From "Center Cloud" to "Distributed Cloud", first, telecom operators should 
take their existing advantages to achieve low-cost startup and agile deployment 
at the edge. For example, they have strong infrastructure networks, massive 
distributed sites and the data center, and provide customers with agile and 
tailored local digital services and maintenance services. Then, it's suggested 
that operators give full play to their advantages in ICT as well as 
hardware-software convergence for edge-driven middle platform reconstruction, 
to ensure higher resource efficiency and provide stronger support for fast 
innovations at the edge.  

"Edge-driven middle platform reconstruction" is to employ finer-granularity 
components horizontally, and build a thinner PaaS layer to enable vertical 
decoupling of the technical service layer and general service layer. Such an 
architecture enables dual circulations. Through highly efficient hardware and 
software coordination, the technical service layer and the IaaS layer provide 
effective support for the upper application layer. 

This architecture also guarantees optimal resource efficiency, which can be 
achieved through the synergy between the general service layer and the 
application layer. Specifically, with its low-code architecture, the general 
service layer enables the agile development of the upper application layer. At 
the same time, the public logic and algorithms accumulated from the application 
layer can be used to resolve the conflicts between customization and scale, 
thereby facilitating the sustainable development of operators. 

With enhanced network capabilities and expanded digital capabilities, 
conditions are ripe for digital transformation of industries. The most 
important is to remain value-oriented and scenario-driven when tailoring 
digital services for vertical industries. 

It is a target to develop underlying network and cloud capabilities by general 
core technologies. On this basis, such capabilities can be flexibly integrated 
for various industries, enterprises, scenarios, and applications, and more 
importantly, for application innovation and incubation. 

At the end of her speech, Ms. Cui concludes, "With the future approaching, 
there are opportunities and challenges in the digital era. ZTE is committed to 
integrating networks, clouds and industries to solidify its position in the 
industry and facilitate the digital transformation of operators, thus embracing 
the digital era and achieving win-win success with all partners." 

Media Contact: 
Margaret Ma                                                       
ZTE Corporation                                                    
Tel: +86-755-26775189                                      
Email: ma.gaili@zte.com.cn  

Source: ZTE Corporation

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