During the FTTH Conference 2017, Beltelecom and Huawei showcased their commercial Smart Home services. Beltelecom also highlighted the development history of the Smart Home service in Belarus, the problems it encountered, and how it closely cooperated with Huawei to solve the challenges it faced.
Additionally, at the Gigaband forum held by Huawei, Beltelecom and other mainstream operators discussed new business profit models for the gigabit access era.
An ITU report shows that over the past 5 years, the ICT development index ranking of Belarus increased rapidly from 52nd position in 2010 to 31st position in 2016. Belarus has become a leader in terms of ICT development among the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).
The rapid ICT growth in Belarus is mainly down to the support and policy guidance of the government as well as steadfast and effective strategy implementation. In broadband infrastructure, Beltelecom started its GPON FTTH strategy in 2011. It has provided FTTH access for over 1.2 million homes, accounting for 50% of total broadband users. It also helps to achieve the fixed broadband home penetration rate of over 70%.
Beltelecom plans to provide the Smart Home service to more home users and continue to work with Huawei on service innovation and introduce more sensors and smart devices to expand the existing Smart Home service types. At the same time, Beltelecom will explore remote metering services and combine Smart Homes with current energy services to implement remote metering for water, electricity, heat, and gas meters in new buildings.
"Beltelecom is a forerunner in the world in the deployment of FTTH and Smart Homes. With the support of Huawei, Beltelecom is able to provide a convenient digital life for users. In the future, Beltelecom will continue to cooperate with Huawei to explore more new business models," said Vadim Shaibakov, CTO of Beltelecom.
Wang Zheng'an, President of Huawei Access Network Product Line said, "Huawei is a strategic partner of Beltelecom and has provided comprehensive support for it in FTTH construction and Smart Home innovation. In the future, Huawei will strengthen the cooperation with Beltelecom, explore new business models, and provide leading products and solutions for Beltelecom."
FTTH Conference 2017 was held in Marseille, France from February 14-16. With the "Smarter Ways for Gigaband" exhibition theme, Huawei aims to help global operators deploy gigabit networks and explore new business models for the gigabit era.