Consumers, businesses key to successful drive to economy

Papua New Guinea (PNG)’s National Transmission Network (NTN) programme, comprising the simultaneous construction of the Coral Sea Cable (CS2) and the Kumul Submarine Cable Network (KSCN), is scheduled for 4G Long-Term Evolution (LTE) rollout end of this year. The National’s reporter DALE LUMA seized the opportunity to tap the experience and thoughts of a business consultant brought in by Huawei Technologies (PNG) Pvt Ltd on July 27.

THE PNG Government’s K661 million KSCN fibre-optic cable domestic project is expected to roll out for commercial use by the first quarter of next year.
The cable will run from Port Moresby, Alotau, Popondetta, Lae and Madang (digitally linking at least 13 provinces and cities in PNG and also Indonesia’s Jayapura). The CS2 will digitally connect PNG to Australia and Solomon Islands.
This will significantly improve PNG’s internet connectivity and capacity, providing speedier access to new markets and businesses, and facilitating students to harness new learning opportunities and communities to reach out to other countries and people across the sea.
While the Government has committed a fortune to provide the basic physical platform required to transform PNG into a robust digital economy, it will remain just that if there is no positive reciprocal response from Papua New Guineans and businesses.
Business consultant Simon Tsang said: “PNG has spent so much on IT (Information Technology) infrastructure with the aim to transform the country into a robust and thriving digital economy.
“The key now is for both consumers and businesses to embrace the digital platform and drive the economy to greater heights.
“According to a 2015 survey on 50 countries, the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of a country is up 1% with a 20% growth in ICT (Information Communications Technology) investment.”
Tsang, with more than 30 years’ experience in sales, business development, channel management, product management, and educational services management in IT, telecom, and test equipment at Fortune 500 companies, should know what digital economy transformation is about.
Tsang had served as Hewlett-Packard’s global account director, Oracle business development global account director and director of educational services, and Global Knowledge Training general manager.
He said a country’s economic growth in the 21st Century digital era “is driven by investments in ICT and policies that stimulate digital progress and development activities”.
Even before the CSS project is fully operational, the Government on July 3 announced that internet rates for consumers using Telikom PNG and bmobile have been slashed by between 70 and 80%.
It is envisaged that the rates are likely to drop even lower when the 4G LTE platform is fully operational by the end of the year.
Huawei, the global giant telecommunications company appointed to help PNG DataCo (Kumul Telikom Holdings’ internet wholesale arm) to construct the CSS project, has stepped up training sessions for all players in IT-related businesses.
It had last year set up the Huawei ICT Academy in Lae’s Unitech, an establishment that was formalised in the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with at the 2nd Digital Transformation Forum 2019 at The Stanley Hotel & Suites ballroom on May 16.
Trainings (in association with National Information and Communications Technology Authority) are now also being conducted at Huawei ICT Training Centre located in the corporate office in Paragon Haus, Hohola.

Tsang … 100 billion global connections between people and machines, and machines to machines by 2025
Tsang said ICT and digital economy would help and benefit both individuals (consumers) and organisations (including governments and businesses) by raising the socio-economic levels of a country.
“Different countries have their own industries that are investing in ICT and the digital economy. PNG can adopt ideas from them, improve the way businesses are conducted and even apply to its niche supply and production chains,” he added.

What is digital economy?
Tsang said that using the internet and technologies that are available to do business “is an economic activity and is classified as digital economy”.
“The ICT’s different applications can be used to conduct businesses faster compared with the traditional ways. There are many applications that provide data in daily business operations that can also be customised or crystallised to become practical application ideas for any activity.
“For example Prada (the Italian luxury fashion house) collects inventory and purchasing data of its products to optimise its supply chain,” he added.
According to the G20 Digital Economic Development and Corporation Initiative, digital economy refers to a broad range of economic activities using a modern information network as an important activity space and the effective use of ICT to drive positive growth and economic structural optimisation.
“There are many activities like purchasing, logistics and more that had been digitalised to facilitate business planning, speedier and smoother operations.
“Basically, with IT and the internet, you can actually use the applications for various business operations and activities. That is sometimes called internet economy or web economy but it is pretty much the same thing.
“In the past, upon request, we have to invoice the customer using paper and then we collect the money or cheque for payment.
“But now, because of the internet or ICT, we can do it much faster online. Companies such as Amazon are selling many more products via the internet with the use of various applications or Apps.
“Today, all I need is a website to market products to anyone and anywhere in the world. This has actually narrowed the competing gap between the more powerful money-making established companies and the small start-up entrepreneurs,” he added.

How ICT can help accelerate businesses and digital economy?
Tsang said Papua New Guineans and businesses should embrace and optimise the use of IT applications because:

• IT reduces transaction costs – In the past you have to go to the bank to do your banking but now through e-Banking (Internet Banking), cost of transactions are reduced because you can just use the internet or your mobile phone; and
• BY 2025, about 24% of the total world economy will be digitalised compared with the current 15%, featuring a growth rate that is three times faster than the traditional economy.

“Those are the reasons why many countries are developing their National Digital Economy Strategies (NDES),” he added, outlining such examples:

• Singapore’s Smart Nation Strategy – aimed at using technology to help Singapore become a smart nation;
• Germany’s industry 4.0 – focused on how to use technology to improve the efficiency of manufacturing in Germany; and
• China’s Internet Plus – this means working towards using the internet for everything and transactions.

Tsang said that in Singapore’s case, it focused on key areas such as:

• BROADBAND infrastructure network – ensuring excellent and efficient powerful infrastructure mobile network coverage or fibre networks to enable speedier access to the cyberworld;
• HELP the industries – to create a value chain in an ecosystem for different industries;
• TRAINING and nurturing ICT talents – focusing on training and building a human capital supply chain that is efficient and competent in various ICT certifications from educational institutions;
• FOCUS on technology development – supporting and sustaining Research and Development (R&D) incubation and funding; and
• OTHER initiatives –such as smart home, smart cars, health care, smart retail, etc.

Tsang said the digital infrastructure was the most fundamental need for the a digital economy to flourish in a country, and that having a 4G LTE network, meaning speedier and bigger capacity for information transmissions.
“For example, in China, you have the Internet Plus which means internet plus something else. It can mean the internet plus manufacturing or internet plus government and others.
“So you need to ensure that you have an adequately efficient broadband for the people and businesses to use. This is the fundamental to facilitate content delivery and speed for those engaged in online transactions.
“This is why there is now a correlation in GDP growth and ICT investment,” he said, adding that the availability of public Clouds (Data storage centres available to users in the internet) has enabled small enterprises to connect and go global.

‘300,000 digital-related jobs by 2040’

Huawei’s White Paper (vision on what ICT will look like in 2025)
Tsang said: “According to Huawei’s White Paper (Global Industry Vision) that was compiled two years ago, all things will be connected in 2025.
“We found that about 40 billion intelligent devices (smart phones and other digitally connected devices) will be globally connected. Some 100 billion global connections are between people and machines and, machines to machines.
“These include things like the water and electricity meters, cars and others. Everything that we use in 2025 will be an intelligent or smart devise.
“There will be more intelligent services for consumers. All these connections will spawn more new business and job opportunities, though at the expense of traditional ones. When things are connected, you can get a lot of data. With data you can get a lot of analytics. With analytics you get immense insights. With insights, you can make many good and more accurate decisions,” he added.
Tsang said that of the 40 billion smart devices, eight billion would be smart phones and more than half will be smart homes that will have other connected devices inside.
“In the smart homes, there will be multiple smart devices such as smart refrigerators, smart televisions and others. The global mobile population will increase by 77%.
“At least 75% of homes will have broadband and 20% of those homes will have internet speeds of one gigabyte per second. Data traffic will also increase tremendously to serve content and speed demand in the internet. By 2025, 100% of companies and enterprises will have some sort of Cloud services.
“In the past, only big enterprises spend a fortune, in millions, to build-up their own data centre. Today, there are online platforms like Amazon, Microsoft and Google that provide public Cloud services or shared services and platforms. Some may still want to have their own data centres but some of their applications will be on Cloud, either public Cloud or a (customised) Cloud infrastructure,” he added.

Cloud computing application network
Tsang said Artificial Intelligence (AI) would also feature significantly on how enterprises conduct their business operations in 2025.
“With AI, things will become more intelligent and efficient. There is a projection that 85% of enterprises will use AI,” he added.

Industry innovation
Tsang said new digital technology advancements had already been developed for different industries and sectors, such as Agriculture and Livestock, fish farming, education, and others.
“These technologies will help reduce labour-intensive needs or unattractive work and make it much easier for people in different industries to monitor their business assets.
“Innovative ideas using ICT can help traditional industries such as livestock farming,” Tsang said.
“There are devices such as NB-IoT (Narrowband Internet of Things) devices already available and used to monitor the movement and behaviour of cows and other animals in the livestock industry.
“It can help to not only monitor the activity of cows, but also the health of the animal.

“Monitoring the health of the livestock can mean that you can sell your produce at a much higher price because of its high quality. Customers are always willing to pay more for quality, be it milk or meat. For dairy farming and for beef, data from cows can be obtained easily where data from cows can be transmitted through NB-IoT devices and Cloud technology applications for analysis, decision-making and action.
“This is digital solution for businesses and operations,” he added.
Tsang said: “There are now digital fish farms where High Definition (HD) cameras and NB-IoT technology applications are used to help monitor the activity of fish in cages, water temperature, food consumption patterns and preferences, health and other factors.
“Cameras take HD images 24 hours and the images are transmitted to a monitoring centre. You don’t need workers to stand watch for 24 hours to get whatever feedback that you need.
“Norway is currently using such digital technology applications that previously worked on 4G network capability but have since switched to using 5G.
“This is because 5G captures much higher image resolutions that enable farmers to even monitor the skin of the fish for health. Digital economy is thus about digitalising production and manufacturing,” he added.
Other industry innovations:

• TRANSPORTATION – smart bikes and vehicles;
• SAFE City – CCTV and IoT technologies are used to monitor city traffic (humans and vehicles) and activities of a city, provide security surveillance, and help police track down suspects and investigations;
• SMART Education – Lessons can be conducted via the internet, thereby reaching out to rural areas where teachers are limited in numbers; and
• SMART health care – Medical assistance and advice can be provided via the use of the internet.

ICT and digital economy in PNG
Tsang said ICT can help boost PNG’s economy but it needs a collaborative effort by both the Government and businesses to invest in ICT technology and applications to accelerate the digital economy transformation to a high level.
“Investment in ICT is not only on the Government side, there must be overall investment from both the government, businesses and consumers. The Government is the enabler and can support with various physical and policy implementations and internet providers to build extensive telecommunication networks to provide access to all, especially the rural areas.
“Without a proper ICT infrastructure and very affordable internet access rates, it will be a slow struggle. Therefore affordability will make the difference to everyone one, organisations, businesses and the Government.
“The use of ICT technologies is potentially efficient and effective to drive growth in industries, tourism, agriculture, education, health and security (both public and private) in enhancing law-and-order enforcement,” he added.
He said “the sky is the limit” if everyone in PNG embraced the digital platform and ICT applications, recognising the potential ICT investment to GDP growth.
Also, internet penetration, the use of Personal Computers (PC) and other electronic gadgets to access cyberspace is key to this 21st Century ICT digital era.
The borderless and speedier access to information helps to drive global progress in education, science and technology. Whatever, nothing can put the brakes on the internet’s influence in the advancement and growth of global science and technology.
Deloitte Australia’s Peter Williams told a Port Moresby Chamber of Commerce and Industry business breakfast on March 28 that Papua New Guineans should be prepared for the digital era.
“The World Bank estimates that by 2040, PNG could increase its economy by US$5 billion (K16.9 billion) and create 300,000 jobs,” he added.