PARTNER FEATURE: Ahead of its participation at MWC23 Shanghai, Mobile World Live caught up with fibre specialist YOFC president Zhuang Dan to discuss the company’s product portfolio, emerging opportunities around digitalisation, it’s international ambitions and, of course, the importance of being on the ground at one of Asia-Pacific’s leading technology events.
Could you please talk about YOFC’s participation in MWC Shanghai 2023?
MWC Shanghai is the largest and most influential mobile communication exhibition in Asia, and the theme this year is Velocity, around which Yangtze Optical Fibre and Cable Joint Stock Limited Company (hereinafter referred to as YOFC) has developed an exhibition with the theme of Lighting up the Digital Future for products and solutions of seven major themes, including new fibre and new materials, network base, marine communication, digital power, digital transportation, F5G digital life and digital manufacturing. This is for creating new value for customers and stimulating the digital economy.
Currently, the rapidly developing digital economy, the prosperous computing services and the transformation of new businesses and new applications such as strategy to channel computing resources from the east to the west for training, storage, and rendering have put forward a series of new requirements on optical network architecture, capacity, speed, latency, energy efficiency, intelligence, security et cetera., driving the fibre and optical cable, upstream and downstream industries to a golden development stage. Facing the development opportunity brought by time, YOFC is actively engaged in digital construction and is transforming from a single product manufacturer to a comprehensive solution provider, launching new solutions and creating new momentum.
Specifically, YOFC focuses on new optical fibres, new materials, 400G/800G AOC optical transceivers, 10G PON optical modules, new optical cables and focuses on building BRIGHTS all-optical bases. We aim to construct intelligent, efficient, secure and stable optical network connection ecology for all scenarios, help optimise and upgrade digital infrastructure, and boost the digital economy. For the marine communication application scenario, YOFC dives into the marine environment and builds the digital ecology of transoceanic transmission by breaking the limitation of geographical location; for the digital manufacturing scenario, it makes breakthroughs in digital twins, industrial big data and other key technologies to build a new mode of intelligent manufacturing; for the electric power scenario, it builds a new intelligent grid system to help the digital transformation of the electric power industry; for the transportation scenario, it integrates digital energy into the railway transportation to help the safe and efficient operation of the digital city; for F5G digital life, minimal, efficient, and reliable pre-connection solutions are adopted to empower astute infrastructure construction so as to create a better digital life.
At present, the internationalisation of Chinese enterprises is irreversible. Please tell us about the international development of YOFC.
YOFC has always considered internationalisation as one of the five strategies for enterprise development. Since 2014, YOFC has been expanding its overseas business with countries along the Belt and Road and in different regions, and has established five production bases in Indonesia, South Africa, Brazil and Poland to drive the development of local industries. In order to better serve overseas customers, YOFC has established more than 50 overseas companies/offices, forming a global overseas marketing and service network, with business covering more than 90 countries and regions worldwide.
In recent years, YOFC’s overseas business has continued to grow. In 2022, the overseas business revenue was RMB 4.6 billion, an increase of 50.6% year-on-year, and the percentage of overseas business revenue has exceeded 30 per cent for two consecutive years. It is worth mentioning that in addition to optical fibre and optical cable, the revenue from overseas communication network engineering projects achieved faster growth in 2022 and the overseas communication network engineering projects in Philippines, Peru, and Indonesia have been steadily promoted and highly recognised by customers.
What is YOFC’s strategic plan for future development?
In the future, YOFC will continue to firmly promote the five strategies of full business growth, internationalisation, diversification, technological innovation and digital transformation, and capital operation for simultaneous growth, which simply means that we will continue to strengthen our main business in fibre and optical cable, maintain our leading position in the world and ensure the continuous growth of our business performance. Also, we will continue to consolidate our leading position in the global industry through technological innovation and digital transformation, and at the same time we will continue to improve our international and diversified business layout, and make good use of capital market investment and financing channels to help our long-term sustainable development.
With the mission of Smart Link Better Life, YOFC is committed to connecting the world with optical fibre, bridging the digital divide by promoting fibre across the world and contributing to the building of a Human Community with A Shared Future.