A hu­man re­source gap is cre­at­ing a com­pli­ca­tion in the re­gion’s push to­wards digi­ti­sa­tion.

This is one of the ob­sta­cles Huawei is hop­ing to over­come as the Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions equip­ment com­pa­ny seeks to be one of the ma­jor dri­vers of dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion in Latin Amer­i­ca and the Caribbean.

In an in­ter­view with the Sun­day Busi­ness Guardian (SBG) at the Brix Au­to­graph Col­lec­tion Ho­tel last Thurs­day, Huawei’s Pub­lic Re­la­tions VP, Latin Amer­i­ca, Ce­sar Fu­nes said it was ob­vi­ous that while the use of tech­nol­o­gy had in­creased, the jobs re­quired for dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion were slow to be filled.

“To con­tin­ue pro­mot­ing the in­vest­ment in dig­i­tal in­fra­struc­ture, not on­ly by the pri­vate sec­tor but al­so the pub­lic sec­tor, there is an area that we have found is a big gap for every­one, not on­ly in Trinidad, but the whole re­gion, and al­most the whole world, is the avail­abil­i­ty of ex­pe­ri­enced tal­ent. These tech­nolo­gies are nor­mal­ly viewed as so­phis­ti­cat­ed sci­ence, tech­nol­o­gy, en­gi­neer­ing math­e­mat­ics, are not the first choice of the stu­dents in gen­er­al,” said Fu­nes.

He al­so not­ed that there was a sig­nif­i­cant gen­der gap in this area as well which need­ed to be ad­dressed.

“The lim­i­ta­tions in the in­dus­try are huge. So what we’re try­ing to do is to al­so fo­cus our ef­forts and our ex­pe­ri­ence in try­ing to help the stu­dents to get con­nect­ed and to de­vel­op more peo­ple .” Fu­nes said.

To­mor­row Huawei will launch the 7th year of its Seed of the Fu­ture Pro­gramme, in which the com­pa­ny will train stu­dents to be­come the fa­cil­i­ta­tors of dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion.

“We have 20 stu­dents from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies and UTT,” said Tri­cia Hen­ry, Pub­lic Re­la­tions Man­ag­er for Huawei Trinidad, “ It’s usu­al­ly a pro­gramme where we take stu­dents to Chi­na, where they learn more about Chi­na with new tech­nolo­gies that Huawei has de­vel­oped and is mov­ing for­ward with. But be­cause of the pan­dem­ic, we’ve ac­tu­al­ly switched to on­line. So we’ve been able to train over the last six years about 70 stu­dents in new tech­nolo­gies, and we’re adding an­oth­er 20.”

She con­tin­ued, “As we talk about the dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion, we don’t for­get the hu­man el­e­ment of it. Be­cause that’s im­por­tant for peo­ple to un­der­stand that it’s re­al­ly the peo­ple that helped make the tech­nol­o­gy work and make the tech­nol­o­gy in sup­port of hu­man in­ter­ac­tion. We look for­ward to train­ing all these young tal­ents and giv­ing them that op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­ly take what they have learned in a prac­ti­cal sense and bring it back to Trinidad and To­ba­go to give Trinidad and To­ba­go more of an edge and help them to be­come lead­ers in the tech­nol­o­gy space.”

The Huawei VP said the pan­dem­ic has made it clear that digi­ti­sa­tion is cru­cial as he point­ed out that coun­tries with greater ca­pac­i­ty for dig­i­tal op­er­a­tions were bet­ter equipped to ride out the chal­lenge cre­at­ed by the pan­dem­ic.

“Af­ter the last two years of the pan­dem­ic it was clear that who­ev­er was con­nect­ed was able to main­tain re­mote school­ing, work from home, even en­ter­tain­ing or even just get­ting con­nect­ed with the fam­i­ly,” he said.

With this in mind, the com­pa­ny is ea­ger to pro­vide dig­i­tal so­lu­tions for key in­dus­tries in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the re­gion.

“It’s clear that broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty is quite im­por­tant. So we are now try­ing to find use cas­es de­pend­ing on the needs and the abil­i­ties of each coun­try. We see oil and gas as one po­ten­tial spe­cif­ic ver­ti­cal that can use 5G for dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion. Min­ing is an­oth­er good sec­tor for the re­gion. Some coun­tries or economies are very well es­tab­lished in or sup­port­ed by min­ing. In gen­er­al, tourism is quite rel­e­vant to im­prove the ex­pe­ri­ence of the end user,” he said as he high­light­ed var­i­ous strong in­dus­tries across the re­gion which could be bol­stered by dig­i­tal ser­vices.

Huawei has been cen­tral to the roll­out of 5G net­works in the Caribbean, in­clud­ing es­tab­lish­ing one such net­work in­fra­struc­ture for lo­cal provider Bmo­bile.

Fu­nes not­ed that there had been sig­nif­i­cant broad­band pen­e­tra­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go which cre­at­ed a great plat­form on which the com­pa­ny could build.

“Broad­band con­nec­tiv­i­ty is quite im­por­tant. Trinidad has very good progress in terms of pen­e­tra­tion of fi­bre net­works. So that’s one very rel­e­vant point as well as to pro­mote the next gen­er­a­tion of mo­bile net­works. Be­cause we be­lieve that with­out fi­bre, there’s no fu­ture. 5G will al­so re­quire a lot of fi­bre to con­nect the sites. The com­bi­na­tion of a lot of fi­bre plus 5G will help to ac­tu­al­ly en­able the use of the tech­nolo­gies that sup­port the dig­i­tal econ­o­my, such as big da­ta, cloud, and In­ter­net of course. The 5G with the ca­pac­i­ty of im­prov­ing speed which is ac­tu­al­ly high­er ca­pac­i­ty, with the abil­i­ty to con­nect mil­lions of de­vices and to re­duce la­ten­cy. So those three vari­ables will of­fer a bet­ter en­vi­ron­ment to pro­mote the dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion of mul­ti­ple in­dus­tries,” he said.

How­ev­er, Fu­nes not­ed that the adop­tion of fi­bre has not pro­gressed as quick­ly as 4G’s pen­e­tra­tion did around the re­gion or as he had hoped. This has cre­at­ed a bit of a chal­lenge for the re­gion’s Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion push.

“Dig­i­tal­i­sa­tion is it’s a con­ver­sa­tion every­where. De­pend­ing on the cov­er­age of broad­band, we can pro­mote more so­phis­ti­cat­ed ser­vices. The pen­e­tra­tion of 4g is I would say is al­most reach­ing ma­tu­ri­ty in the re­gion. It is not com­plet­ed, to be hon­est. I mean, 4G is still go­ing on and grow­ing. There’s some space to be cov­ered with 4G, which is al­ready broad­band, and mo­bile broad­band. So, the pen­e­tra­tion of wired broad­band or the pen­e­tra­tion of broad­band in gen­er­al in the re­gion im­proved sig­nif­i­cant­ly, thanks to 4G. In par­al­lel, the pen­e­tra­tion of fi­bre is a lit­tle bit be­hind 4G I mean, we al­so con­tin­ue evolv­ing in the re­gion,” he said.

Fu­nes al­so ex­plained that Huawei was al­so at­tempt­ing to en­cour­age more com­pa­nies around the re­gion to em­brace cloud tech­nol­o­gy, which he said would serve as a ma­jor aid in the dig­i­tal push.