Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei is investing significantly in so-called Internet of Things solutions, in an effort to become a leading IoT connectivity platform, said Li Sanqi, the company's chief technology officer of products and solutions on Tuesday in London.

Li said that as the IoT industry is a rapidly emerging new sector, Huawei is looking to provide accessible joint innovation laboratories for its partner and customer companies to develop new solutions that will accelerate the telecom industry's digital transformation.

Li was speaking at a media and analyst conference in London ahead of the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona in late February, during which the company will showcase over 20 new digital solutions and host 10 industry joint innovations sessions.

The IoT industry, which has emerged in recent years, intelligently connects humans, devices and systems that have IP addresses. Huawei currently collaborates with consultants and software partners to provide integrated solutions to transportation, energy, government and others.

Li said openness, collaboration and shared success are the key to growing the IoT platform, and is a path that Huawei wants to take. Huawei has already established more than ten open labs across China, Europe and other regions and has brought together over 600 partners.

In previous years at MWC Huawei has mostly focused on exhibiting its own products, but this year the company sees itself mostly as a platform where more than 90 partners and customers are invited to share their experiences and solutions.

Huawei also announced on Tuesday its ‘Big Initiative' campaigning slogan, which rests on the idea of connectivity and flexibility for solution provision and infrastructure building, and sharing resources in complementary partnerships.

Huawei said that at the MWC it will exhibit new solutions for IoT, 4.5G, 2K/4K video technology and safe city technology.

4.5G refers to an advancement of technology on the current 4G technology, and aids the digital world's transition into 5G, which is expected to commercialize in 2020.

Huawei is recognized as an industry leader in 4.5G, delivering mobile broadband data rates of up to 1,000 megabits per second, and which enables high definition voice content.

One crucial technology for 4.5G which Huawei will launch at MWC is GigaRadio, which is expected to accelerate the adoption of 4.5G globally.

In the 2K/4K video space, Huawei has developed leading video streaming and transferring technology to improve video's quality, recognizing that a large portion of the world's digital content sharing is via video.

Huawei's safe cities solutions help governments to provide safety to their citizens. They are powered by the firm's latest IoT and mobile broadband technologies to deliver smart, video-based security systems for cities, and are already deployed in over 100 cities across over 30 countries.

Huawei, which was founded in 1987 in Shenzhen, is the largest telecommunications equipment manufacturer in the world, having overtaken Ericsson in 2012.

The company has three key businesses, which are carrier, corporate and consumer. As a carrier business, Huawei provides services to operators such as O2 and Vodafone, and separately it provides telecommunication solutions to businesses, and retail products such as mobile phones to consumers.

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