Nokia, a global leader in technologies that connect people and things, has organised a two-day Mobile World Congress Roadshow (MWC-R) in Accra.
The MWC-R demonstrates Nokia’s latest innovation to telecom operators, government departments, enterprises, and business partners to help them build smart cities with internet of Things (IoT) and critical-communications network for public safety while ensuring a world-class mobile broadband customer experience for the subscribers in Ghana.
The road show, which also marks 151 anniversary of Nokia, shows latest innovations to help Ghana meet the demand for network capacity, speed, coverage, and utilise Internet of Things (IoT) opportunities.
Nokia also sought to show telecom operators how to meet the ever-increasing demand for the network capacity, speed and coverage, and improve the customer experience with high-quality and secure networks.
Nokia underlines its strong presence in Ghana, and further strengthens its relationship powered by the innovation of Bell Labs and Nokia Technologies; the Company is at the forefront of creating and licensing the technologies that are increasingly at the heart of connected lives in Ghana.
The customer demonstration are in key areas like IoT, public safety network, small cells, customer experience management, IP backhaul network, transport network and Software Defined Networking.
Speaking at the launch of the roadshow on Wednesday in Accra, Ramy Hashem, Nokia Country Senior Officer in Ghana, said: “Ghana is an important market for Nokia. This is the first innovation road show Nokia brings to Ghana for the country’s socio-economic benefits.”
“We see this as an opportunity for Ghanaian ICT market to benefit from our state-of-the-art technologies and concepts to transform telecom networks to be more dynamic, agile and evolving.
“The series of technology road shows in Africa are designed according to the different market needs to meet the growing demand of data-intensive applications, and prepare for the next wave of network devolvement including cloud, IoT and ultra-broadband networks.
“This is foreseen to change the consumer life style for years to come for a wide range of services from education, public safety, e-health, multiple connected devices and more,” he added.
Mr Edward Ato Sarpong, a Deputy Minister of Communications said: “It is not a mean achievement to survive as a business in this highly competitive and turbulent global business environment but Nokia has been able to do it in the last 151 years.”
“We live in era where we cannot do anything without technology, within the health, road sector, political sector educational and security sector technology is key to advance activities within these sectors,” he added.
He said in 2015, in terms of foreign direct investments into the country, was close to three billion dollars; of which about 12-13 per cent went into the service and the technology sectors.
Mr Ato Sarpong said government would continue to create the conducive climate for businesses to operate in the country.
He said the coming of Nokia into the country is timely and would enhance telephony services across the country, and government would support Nokia’s initiative that would help the people of the country.
He said the lack of mobile network reception in some of the parts of the country had made government to introduce the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communication; with the objective of partnering entities such as Nokia in delivering technology to areas where mobile services do not exist.
Ms Pirjo Suomela-Chowdhury, the Finnish Ambassador to Ghana and Nigeria, recounted that Nokia was there when the first mobile phone was created, and it had been leading the mobile communications.
“All over the world, the Nokia technology has been an intimate companion of people’s lives and in many ways has transformed lives. Nokia has always been in the fore front of innovation,” she said.
“Ghana is a great country to do business, there is great interest and confidence in doing business in Ghana and this is active time for Finland Ghana trade relations,” she added.
She recounted that just three months ago, a business delegation led by the Under-Secretary of State for External Economic Relations, Ministry for Foreign Affairs of Finland, was in Ghana to explore the markets and enhance business relations.
She said trade promotion, building active relations between both countries, governments, companies and peoples, fostering positive development in Ghana would definitely continue to be at the very heart of Finland’s effort.
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Source: GNA