Addressing the audience is Allen Chen, VP of Public Affairs and Communications of Huawei Central America and Caribbean Region
CANTO 2019 Family Photo, with Allen Chen alongside Regional Ministers, Operators and CANTO Officials and members

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Trinidad, July 23, 2019]    Countries like Suriname and Guyana have already begun to see success from adopting new ICT technologies for their National Digital Transformation strategies.

This was revealed by Allen Chen, VP of Public Affairs and Communications of Huawei Central America and Caribbean Region as he spoke at the Opening Ceremony of CANTO 2019 on Sunday 21 July.

Held at the Hyatt Regency, the ceremony included regional Government Ministers with responsibility for ICT, along with regional and international telco operators and regulators – all coming together to discuss how to move the digital Caribbean forward, under the conference theme of “Transitioning to a Digital Region- Opportunities and Challenges”.

Chen said that Huawei was successfully able to use its technology solutions to deploy Smart City solutions in countries like Panama and Suriname, and cited Guyana as another market which was making strides in ICT for government service delivery.

“More recently, we are striving to develop and improve the delivery of services to the citizens of Guyana in the areas of health, education, security and government administration,” said Chen, adding that the introduction of 5G would certainly bring new benefits and possibilities for Smart Cities for the people of the region.

While many countries in the region may believe that 5G was only for larger and more advanced countries and economies, Chen shared that there were cases of countries similar in size to those in Caribbean islands that could be used as an example for 5G.

“Monaco might bring specific inspiration to small countries/nations,” Chen said. “There, we applied the 5G technology for Connected Vehicles, Wireless Robotics, Cloud VR/AR, Wireless eHealth and eEducation,  together with (telecom provider) Monaco Telecom in its Smart Nation Strategy.”

Closer to home, Suriname telecommunication provider, Telesur’s CEO, Mike Antonius announced that it will launch its evolution to 5G in October 2019 in partnership with Huawei. And T&T’s Minister of Public Utilities, Sen. The Hon. Robert Le Hunte said that TSTT would be deploying a 5G network in T&T by December 2019.