Huawei talks up “video as basic” at Analyst Conference 2016

Telcos must place the same premium on video services as they do on voice in order to succeed in the future, according to Huawei.

During his opening keynote to delegates at Huawei Analyst Conference 2016, Eric Xu, Hawei's rotating CEO, said carriers have been very focused on data transfer speeds so far, but not in a way that consumers have noticed.

Video and, increasingly, virtual reality are the things that are important to end users, Xu added, claiming telcos are in prime position to offer these services.

The best way for them to take advantage of this, he said, is for Video over LTE to become as fundamental a part of telcos' business strategies and customer offerings as Voice over LTE.

In order to enable this, telcos must move towards "full cloudification", which is to say migrating to full public cloud, with the network becoming software-defined and as much automation introduced as possible.

Touching on the company's existing partnerships with Deutsche Telecom and Telefnica, Xu said for its global strategy in this vertical Huawei is only interested in partnering with partners that already have strong relationships with enterprises to be able to drive cloud take-up in these large businesses worldwide.

Ultimately, Xu said, the 2016 strategy for Huawei is to help drive full cloudification for telcos and enable digital transformation within them, which they in turn can use to drive digital transformation and cloud uptake in enterprises on the one hand, and satisfy the thirst for visual media among consumers.

Huawei Analyst Conference is taking place in Shenzhen from 11 to 12 April. IT Pro's Senior Writer, Jane McCallion, will be reporting live across both days of the conference.