LIVE FROM MOBILE ASIA EXPO 2014: Executives from Huawei and China Telecom outlined what they think will be needed to ensure reliable and usable mobile connectivity in the future.

Speaking in the keynote session addressing ‘constant connectivity’, Ryan Ding, president of products and solutions at Huawei, said: “In the 21st century we realised that the way we connect is not that good — it needs to go through some more transformation.”

With ambitions to provide services that make use of cloud computing and big data, Ding said: “In order to fulfil this dream we need to build a much better connectivity platform.”

Huawei is working on various ways to improve connectivity, including research and development around 5G (in which it has committed to invest $600 million by 2018); all-optical fixed networks; and content aware networks with a greater ability to store and distribute data.

Touting the value of public-private partnerships in implementing suitable technology, Ding said: “It is important to collaborate to plan and allocate scarce spectrum resources.”

Ding added that operators need to build flexible networks as it is difficult to predict exactly how data traffic will change in the near future.

Jiping Zhang, deputy GM at China Telecom, echoed Ding’s views on collaboration between the public and private sector.

Referring to China Telecom’s goal of improving 3G coverage in China’s large rural regions, Zhang said the operator is looking to attract private investors.

“So we need a lot of capital and investment and believe we have a good return on investment. We always adopt an open collaborative policy in promote our business development,” he noted.

China Telecom is also addressing the issue of network flexibility by using a combination of TD-LTE and FDD-LTE for its 4G services, “in the hope that we can use spectrum resources to provide better services to consumer”.

But operators and vendors can only go so far, according to Ding: “The government should come up with more proactive policies to drive IT innovation,” he said, explaining that spectrum allocation must be better coordinated and done so on a technology neutral basis.

Without change, Ding warned there will be a shortfall in mobile broadband spectrum by 2020, with China particularly challenged.

“The policy we have today is a prohibitive factor. My worry is that by 2020, you will probably think policy is still a prohibitive factor. So we ask that the government relax the standards,” he said.