Interview: Assistant Chief Executive and Deputy Director General (Telecoms and Post), IDA: “Singapore is gearing up to be the world’s first ‘smart nation’.

Ms Aileen Chia, Assistant Chief Executive and Deputy Director General (Telecoms and Post), IDA

Ms Aileen Chia, Assistant Chief Executive and Deputy Director General (Telecoms and Post), IDA is delivering the opening keynote on Day One of the 9th annual LTE Asia conference,  taking place on the 23rd-25th September 2014 at the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore. Here she gives us an overview into the work of the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and how it is helping take Singapore on its ‘smart city’ journey.

What are the primary opportunities and challenges for your region over the next three years?

The Asia Pacific region accounts for over 50% of the world’s mobile subscribers, with mobile penetration expected to reach 89% by the end of 2014.  Fuelled by increasingly affordable smart devices, the rate of adoption of mobile broadband is increasing alongside with mobile penetration as networks are being upgraded to next generation platforms. Additionally, 44% of global fixed broadband subscriptions are from the Asia Pacific with some Asian countries such as Singapore having introduced high speed broadband network such as fibre broadband. These indicate that there are both opportunities and challenges in the region, as there is a large and still-growing data-hungry consumer base.

Interview: EVP Strategy, Bouygues Telecom: “The French market is not in a situation favourable to sophisticated pricing strategies.”

Frédéric Ruciak, EVP of strategy for Bouygues Telecom

The LTE World Summit is the premier 4G event for the telecoms industry and is taking place on the 23rd-26th June 2014, at the Amsterdam RAI, Netherlands. Frédéric Ruciak, EVP of strategy for Bouygues Telecom will be speaking on a panel dedicated to maximizing revenue from LTE, taking place on one of the conference.

To what extent have you virtualised your network and how important will NFV be in the future?

We have not yet implemented NFV in our network but we think it may be an opportunity in the future. The main benefits will be to reduce costs in our core network and to improve time to market. We think robust and powerful solutions may go live within a three- to five-year timeframe. We’ll be cautious in terms of operations and QoS, because we may potentially move from single vendor platforms, with clear commitment, to layered environments, where we may have interoperability issues and multiple responsibilities.