Mark Lyn­der­say

On June 25, for two weeks, Huawei, a ma­jor Chi­nese telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions com­pa­ny op­er­at­ing in T&T over the last decade, host­ed six com­put­er sci­ence and com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing stu­dents from UWI on an im­mer­sive tech­nol­o­gy in­tro­duc­tion to their op­er­a­tions in Shen­zen and a cul­tur­al en­gage­ment in Bei­jing.

The pro­gramme has op­er­at­ed un­der the ti­tle Tele­com Seeds for the Fu­ture since 2008, with 57 coun­tries tak­ing part since it be­gan. The 2016 tour, which in­clud­ed stu­dents from uni­ver­si­ties in Chi­na, 15 stu­dents from France and ten from Zim­bab­we, was the first to in­clude par­tic­i­pants from the Eng­lish-speak­ing Caribbean, with T&T tak­ing the lead­ing edge role.

Three of the stu­dents of­fered per­spec­tives on their ex­pe­ri­ences in the pro­gramme.

"My field of in­ter­est is AI," said Jonathan Ear­le, a com­put­er sci­ence stu­dent with his eye on a doc­tor­ate in the field, "[but] be­fore this I didn't con­sid­er the im­pact net­works have had on this field."

"I am al­so now con­sid­er­ing do­ing more net­work ori­ent­ed cours­es next se­mes­ter. The trip has al­so giv­en me a bad case of wan­der­lust, and I am con­sid­er­ing trav­el­ling to more non-na­tive Eng­lish speak­ing coun­tries, it is a hum­bling and ex­cit­ing ex­pe­ri­ence which makes the sim­plest thing like get­ting gro­ceries an ex­cit­ing ad­ven­ture.

"I was able to ex­pe­ri­ence how 4G net­works are set­up and main­tained and how cur­rent GPON ser­vices work and are set­up in­clud­ing high-speed in­ter­net, VOIP and IPTV," said Dy­lan Deyal, a In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy stu­dent.

"Be­fore this trip, I was be­tween dif­fer­ent ca­reer choic­es like data­bas­es, de­vel­op­ment and net­work­ing, while I al­ways had a vest­ed in­ter­est in net­work­ing.

"I've al­most com­plete­ly de­cid­ed to fol­low a ca­reer in net­work­ing, and hope­ful­ly bring some of the newest net­work­ing con­cepts and in­fra­struc­ture to T&T."

Va­lene Ram­per­sad was the lone woman among the group from T&T. A com­put­er en­gi­neer­ing stu­dent, she's now clear "this is where I want my ca­reer to go, it was the clos­est I have ever been to my ca­reer goals."

"This op­por­tu­ni­ty has changed my think­ing about my fields of fur­ther study and re­search in ICT which I am even more in­ter­est­ed in.

"The pos­si­bil­i­ty of even­tu­al­ly work­ing at a Re­search and De­vel­op­ment Cen­tre at Huawei in Chi­na is a ca­reer goal that I now have set."

Tri­cia Hen­ry, Pub­lic Re­la­tions man­ag­er for Huawei T&T ac­com­pa­nied the stu­dents on the trip and ex­plained, "For us, it's not just about tak­ing the stu­dents on a trip to Chi­na. It's about plant­i­ng seeds in fu­ture in­ter­na­tion­al work­ers.

"We be­lieve that these ICT stu­dents are the seeds that we can nur­ture, with rel­e­vant and for­ward-think­ing train­ing to en­able them to grow in­to the fu­ture ICT work­ers, re­searchers, de­vel­op­ers and en­tre­pre­neurs who will de­vel­op a vi­brant tech­nol­o­gy sec­tor–and, as a re­sult, every oth­er sec­tor–in T&T."

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The stu­dents se­lect­ed from T&T for the Tele­com Seeds pro­gramme for 2016 were:

�2 Va­lene Ram­per­sad–Year 2 Stu­dent, BSc Com­put­er and Elec­tri­cal En­gi­neer­ing. (Ms Ram­per­sad spoke on be­half of the T&T con­tin­gent at the con­clu­sion of the pro­gramme.)

�2 Dy­lan Deyal–Year 2 stu­dent, BSc In­for­ma­tion Tech­nol­o­gy.

�2 Jonathon Ear­le–Year 2 stu­dent, BSc Com­put­er Sci­ence.

�2 Ker­schel James–Year 2 stu­dent, BSc Com­put­er Sci­ence.

�2 Aaron Roop­nar­ine–Year 2 stu­dent, BSc Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing.

�2 Ryan Chin Sang–Year 2 stu­dent, BSc Elec­tri­cal and Com­put­er En­gi­neer­ing.