By Christel Heydemann, VP Corporate Human Resources & Transformation, Alcatel-Lucent

I just returned from the World Economic Forum on Latin America in Mexico, as I was invited to attend the Young Global Leader event with an energizing group of 280 young leaders coming from 59 countries, with very diverse backgrounds in politics, business, arts, social entrepreneurs or civil society.

Several debates with young global leaders including the opening session with Klaus Schwab and the closing meeting with Presidente Calderon of Mexico indicated the dawn of a new era. The Human age or the new era of Talentism, in which access to talent is replacing capital as the key economic differentiator.

In his opening keynote to Young global leaders, Klaus Schwab refered to his blog “The end of capitalism…what’s next ?” and restated his conviction: “it is fair to say that capital is losing its status as the most important factor of production in our economic system. As I outlined in my opening address in Davos, capital is being superseded by creativity and the ability to innovate — and therefore by human talents — as the most important factors of production. If talent is becoming the decisive competitive factor, we can be confident in stating that capitalism is being replaced by “talentism.” Just as capital replaced manual trades during the process of industrialization, capital is now giving way to human talent.”

As head of Human Resources for Alcatel-Lucent, I can’t agree more… Any business needs talents to succeed, and talent has no age, no passport and no gender, but talents attract talents !  On a global scale, we define our strategic workforce plan to ensure the best match of our needs for specific skills with available talents in the different markets. There are obvious differences between aging Europe and very competitive China. But beyond the optimization of skills needs and available talents, we also strive to offer the best career development path in order to develop and retain our talents. I had the opportunity to explain to other leaders how we do it within Alcatel-Lucent, I explained in particular that we launched in 2011 a global Internal Job Market where employees have access to all open positions within Alcatel-Lucent and can apply for jobs easily. Actually as easily as if they were applying for a job outside… the objective being to make our internal job market as attractive as the external market for every country we operate in.

For companies all over the world, finding individuals with the right skills is a key driver to business success, yet despite access to a large population, employers in every region are still struggling with a skills mismatch. This week in Mexico, business and political leaders discussed about innovative and sustainable models and solutions to address these challenges and drive transformation.

It is crucial that businesses and governments collaborate in every part of the world to unleash the potential of the most precious scarce resource – people.

Regional priorities are very different, but as President Felipe Calderon of Mexico, himself a Young Global Leader from the class of 1997, openly discussed with us: “The world is getting old, and we need to define new ideals and get new ideas from the younger generations across the globe”.

As economists are predicting the worst economic recovery in the post-World War era, while policy-makers around the globe have put creating jobs on top of their agenda, while all leaders must adapt in a world where velocity, connectivity, complexity and transparency have become the norm… I want to remember one thing from the WEF in Mexico: we are entering a new era of talentism where people who have dreams can make a difference !

Author’s grandfather, Lawrence A. Wagner, on an airfield in Santiago, Chile, 1931.

By John Fredette, Corporate Communications, Alcatel-Lucent.

Two weeks ago, while helping my mother move for the first time in 48 years, I came across some photos of her father. Lawrence “Sparks” Wagner was one of the first communications officers for Pan American Airlines. Radio communications fascinated him; in fact he had one of the very first radio sets in Baltimore, Maryland.  In the early 1930s in South America he had to carry a gun to protect against animals as he and his colleagues oversaw the clearing of jungle land for new air strips.  He knew seven languages and was learning Chinese for his upcoming post on PanAm’s China Clipper route when he was tragically killed in a plane crash at the Lima airport.

Based on stories from my grandmother I believe I know what type of person my grandfather was.  New technology fascinated him as did the idea of expanding frontiers.  He understood the risks, but he wanted to be part of the vanguard of pioneers who were creating a global network of international flight.  I am sure he would be amazed by how wireless communications have developed in the last 80 years.  I see a direct connection between what we are doing today in developing broadband wireless around the globe and what my grandfather’s industry was doing in the last century.

Certainly the physical dangers for the majority of us in telecommunications are very limited. But there are risks.  The risks are not necessarily for us as individuals but rather for our society and its organizations as we plough full speed ahead in developing and broadening the phenomenon referred to as ‘hyperconnectivity’.

Today, more people in more places have access to communications networks and are building (digital) links that are stronger and more prevalent than ever before in history.  Hyperconnectivity means always being easily connected by whatever device and wherever you are. It makes almost limitless amounts of data readily available. It is interactive and it is always keeping track of all those interactions.

Hyperconnectivity is not a simple phenomenon. Several colleagues and I at Alcatel-Lucent explored some of its brighter, and sometimes darker sides in a chapter we contributed to the World Economic Forum’s 2012 Global Information Technology Report, entitled “The Promise and Peril of Hyperconnectivity” (PDF file) . While the paper is relatively short, it does highlight the myriad of impressive benefits that hyperconnectivity is providing to the global community. It also points out some of the downsides that come with hyperconnectivity.

Hyperconnectivity both brings us benefits and confronts us with challenges.  It can be a powerful tool for all forms of collaboration, driving global alignment, increased efficiency, and material development. But it has very rapidly changed the way many things are done and people are expected to fully accommodate those changes – fast and no matter what the costs. All of that information and all of that access also present risks for mis-use.

My recent moving endeavors were greatly aided by the various forms of hyperconnectivity available to me:

• My iPhone kept me connected during the 500 mile road trip from Raleigh, North Carolina to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and helped me book a motel for a stay along the way
• During my time away from the office, broadband, my laptop and my iPhone kept me connected for work and conference calls
• I found the resources to sell the contents of my mother’s house online and communicated with the sellers virtually until I was in Pittsburgh
• The house contents sale was advertised online and when it was over my mother was thankful to have an empty house and the proceeds from the sale to buy an iMac

While hyperconnectivity made my trip and the whole experience more efficient and more easily managed in ways that would not have been possible a decade ago, my experience also vividly demonstrated one of the major challenges that hyperconnectivity presents. The ability to stay connected was invaluable in this instance, but disconnecting is sometimes just as important. In this case, however, at least I had that choice.

Which raises and important question – what about the people who are being left behind? Hyperconnectivity is spreading quickly into deeper and deeper recesses of the globe, but will it ever reach everyone?  Are we building a hyper-disconnected class?  Will the people who are not hyperconnected be at a perpetual disadvantage?

We all have a responsibility to understand the scope, benefits and risks of hyperconnectivity.  The chapter my colleagues and I contributed to the GITR is a good foundation for gaining that understanding. I would like to think my grandfather would be proud of it.

By Adolfo Hernandez, President of Alcatel-Lucent’s software, services and solutions division.

Today’s web and app-driven world has awakened newfound interest in the role the network plays in the future of technology. In this post, we’ll look at the reasons driving that interest and how what was traditionally a hardware-dominated industry is evolving to one that is more software-centric.

It’s what’s inside that counts. That’s where true beauty lives. Your parents knew it. Your teachers knew it. Heck, even Intel knew it. And, slowly but surely, the telecom industry is realizing it as video drives changes in the network.

That inside beauty of the network is software.

To build a more intelligent network – one that requires moving, dispatching, allocating and caching video to new and different devices – requires software. Software is the tool we use to ensure caching is done efficiently, to ensure transactions are processed, to code the APIs to enable us to expose elements of the network, to deal with things like advanced communications, charging and analytics.

Yet, this is certainly not the traditional software most people would think, not even in the back office or IT processing of an enterprise. The software to make the network intelligent must be telco-grade software able to operate in the hallowed five-nines environment. It must have absolute integrity and reliability. But it also must possess the latest and greatest technologies, be build on community-driven development models, implement the right industry standards, and be built on a flexible, cloud-aware architecture.

The more time I spend wrestling with this culture challenge – and this challenge is very real – the more I come to understand there’s no one solution that fits all. A few years ago, the telecommunications industry had the problem that everything they did was very solid and reliable…but slow. Realizing this, some over-rotated, went agile, but didn’t reach the levels of reliability and quality their customers needed. Likewise, the web industry moved quickly, but sacrificed reliability. Moving forward, intelligent networks will need to do both.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, how do you marry the innovation cycles of the software industry – the weekly code drops, the agile methodologies, the working hand-in-hand with the customer – with the levels of quality and reliability that meet the standards and requirements of the telco industry? You have to bring a lot of different things to the table.

Let me give you an example of what we’re doing at Alcatel-Lucent: First of all, we’re hiring a lot of new people to drive the new areas where we don’t have traditional skills. We have built significant software development communities in places like Israel, China, India and North America. We’re hiring new people who come with a bunch of new skills that aren’t pervasive in the telecommunications industry. But we’re also trying to bring this together with some of the testing, integration, end-to-end analysis and end-to-end design that are more grown in and standard in the telecommunications industry so that we can have the best of both worlds. This is different thinking than the traditional telco mindset. It’s the reason we’re looking at this challenge holistically – at the hardware, software and services – to harness the network to give our customers (and their customers) more business value.

But software on its own isn’t enough to increase the intelligence of the network. It’s a key component, that much is certain, but it is not the only thing. The build-out of an intelligent network also requires services, consulting, the ability to integrate third-party solutions and operate in a heterogeneous way. It requires the experience and deep industry insight to determine which control points on the network have been stressed by the arrival of video. We’ve seen the impact of video already playing out in areas like charging, subscriber management and analytics.

It even requires working closely with the hardware platform side of the industry, which has been undergoing a big transformation over the past few years. We’ve seen the arrival of the ATCA platforms, then the arrival of more traditional off the shelf blade based architectures, and now we’ve seen a move towards having fully-distributed cloudified platforms that will span a number of blades and a rack and in many cases will span several cities or countries, and, in some cases, continents. This makes it critical to understand the necessary requirements to provide software and services that are able to operate on the traditional environments, but to also provide virtualized versions that can work on different hypervisors. On one hand it’s a challenge because it forces a lot deep, forward thinking about architectures. But the path is clear: more and more of what we do as an industry has to be fully virtualized, has to be more modular and it has to be cloudified. That’s the clear future direction. The network is slowly migrating, but we’re not going to get there tomorrow.

So we’re working with customers to determine how much of a solution to their problem must be services, how much of the solution must be software, what part of the services should be people based and what part of the services should be software based. That freedom to build the best solution is one of the approaches we are taking as a company that is somewhat unique. Because, when the only thing you’ve got is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Within Alcatel-Lucent, we have hammers, pliers and screwdrivers because we understand not every customer problem is a nail.

We use software for a lot of things. It’s the beauty inside the network. And it is also the network’s future.

Adolfo.

Marie Thérèse Royce, Senior Director International Public Affairs for the Americas

By Marie Thérèse Royce, Senior Director International Public Affairs for the Americas. Marie was in Haiti following the earthquake and provides us here with an  update about a new submarine cable which will accelerate Haiti’s recovery and growth.

I was working 400 miles away from Haiti, the day of the 7.0 magnitude earthquake that caused significant damage and loss of life more than two years ago.  As the weeks passed, I was invited to be a part of a delegation, convened and hosted by the U.S. Chamber’s Business Civic Leadership Center (BCLC), who met with leaders from the Haitian government and leading NGOs during a trip to earthquake-ravaged Haiti.  I represented Alcatel-Lucent to Haiti as part of the delegation. Our group of companies worked to gain a better understanding of the Haitian leadership’s redevelopment priorities and sought to engage in long-term recovery activities such as in-country relationship building and international volunteerism.

It became clear that access to information and communication networks is now an essential part of the basic infrastructure needed for socio-economic development. After the recovery, the country was an illustration that ICTs are nearly as important as access to clean water and transportation.

Alcatel-Lucent is now giving the country a further boost by installing an undersea cable which will connect it to the global economy through broadband services.

Richard Nilsson, VP Sales & Marketing North America Region, of Alcatel-Lucent’s Submarine division

Richard Nilsson, VP Sales & Marketing North America Region, of Alcatel-Lucent’s Submarine division shared the news: “Digicel has selected Alcatel-Lucent to deliver high capacity undersea cable to Haiti. We are laying a 200 km undersea cable that will link Haiti to the global Internet. The cable is in fact a new branch of the existing FibraLink system owned by Columbus Networks. The new multi-terabit branch will connect Haiti to international gateways in Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.”

The project is being led by Digicel, a service provider present in 26 countries and territories throughout the Caribbean and Central America with more than six million wireless users. Digicel is a major wireless service provider in Haiti and this new cable will support the growth of existing communications services and the introduction of new broadband services.

The lack of ICT services is obviously a huge problem in the effort to rebuild the country and its economy. Historically, satellite has been used to support the majority of communications into and out of Haiti; however it has limited capacity to support evolving broadband applications such as video streaming. Microwave links into the Dominican Republic are also used along with an existing subsea cable connecting Haiti to the Bahamas whose long-term outage highlighted the need for this new subsea cable. Telecommunications is critical for the development of all countries, but this is especially true in impoverished countries like Haiti. Connecting this cable means that Haiti will be connected to the rest of the world via a secure, ultra-high capacity link. Having reliable and efficient telecommunications services means that services can be developed in areas including telemedicine, education, government and NGO relations, financial services and internet services.

Developing these services will also attract foreign investment into the country, which in turns means employment for local people. Telecommunications is therefore really a key driver for the economic development of the country and it’s also a key element for improving the quality of life for the Haitian people. There is still a lot of work to do to rebuild Haiti and its communications infrastructure; however this new cable is a big step forward for them. “

Stephen Jordan, founder and executive director, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Business Civic Leadership Center (U.S. Chamber BCLC) remarked, “I am so glad that Alcatel-Lucent and Digicel stepped up to the plate.  Communications are vital for progress and development, and this is going to empower Haitians at every level of society.”

When I was in the region at the time of the earthquake two years ago, I didn’t know that our company and its sector colleagues would be providing part of Haiti’s international assistance. Alcatel-Lucent’s employees recognized the need for immediate support, successfully restoring communications within days for our wireless customer Digicel. In coordination with new management at our 20-year customer Natcom, formerly known as the government-owned Teleco, we assisted with reliability and resiliency recommendations. We completed our network assessment and restored full-fixed line service including international links with the Dominican Republic. When I visited a few months later, I was moved by my time spent in the tent cities and seeing the impact on the Haitians firsthand.  In the public meeting at the US Department of State I shared my experience regarding our Haitian relief and reconstruction efforts.

It is safe to say that the destruction of Haiti’s infrastructure and other extensive damage caused by the earthquake set back Haiti’s development significantly. As a company we executed our disaster relief plan, and through the Alcatel-Lucent Foundation we instituted our Haiti employee matching program, raising nearly $300,000. This relief aid was given to Doctors Without Borders, the International Red Cross, Hope for Haiti, UNICEF and the Resource Foundation.

At the US Chamber BCLC Haiti Jobs Summit the country’s near term and long-term development plans were shared.  Rick Nilsson and I listened with great interest to the Ambassadors and companies.  It became clear that decentralization of the population is a priority. The goal can be achieved through the implementation of high speed broadband for e-education, e-health, public safety, tourism, and transportation initiatives for additional cities outside of the capitol.  The World Bank’s Information and Communications for Development report provided compelling documentation regarding the relationship between broadband penetration and increased GDP growth. Broadband supports decentralization and job creation. We learned that Haiti had the lowest broadband penetration and internet usage in the Caribbean according to the United Nations International Telecommunication Union (ITU) figures prior to the earthquake.

In the first year after the quake, international callers and internet users continued to be unable to use Natcom’s submarine cable network due to extensive damage. Alcatel-Lucent continued to advocate that the one submarine cable link be restored and an additional submarine cable link into Haiti be created as quickly as possible, establishing two cable links. We knew that the two submarine cables – together – would provide diversity and price competition, similar to other countries in the region. The cost saving benefits would spread to companies and people.

The new submarine cable is an important part of Haiti’s Recovery and Growth.

As a company, Alcatel-Lucent is committed to improving broadband access for Haiti as well as many other countries. In today’s world, access to information and communications networks is nearly as important as access to clean water and transportation. With two and one-half billion people still unable to connect to mobile telephony or broadband, we believe it is our responsibility to help close this digital divide.

We look forward to being a partner with Haiti in the years to come for this endeavor and I am remain committed personally to ensure that Haiti truly becomes a better place to live for its people.

Participants to the closing panel of the BASD RIO+20 preparation event

By Philippe Richard, VP Bell Labs in charge of green strategy.

Last week in the Hague, a Rio+20 sustainable development conference exposed need for ICT’s enablement potential to be heard. Further to this, it is clear that long-term results need to allow for technology investments that yield OPEX savings, versus short term CAPEX deals.

The key points were:

• During this Rio +20 business consultation, ICT’s role as an enabler for low carbon economy across industries was incorporated into the conference agenda at the last minute. While ICTs were mentioned in the opening statements, the role and value of ICTs were not clearly identified until the end.
• As a member of the closing panel, “Road to Rio and beyond”, I offered examples of how Alcatel-Lucent’s ICT solutions contribute towards the much needed, low-carbon economy, including perspectives relative to national energy consumption patterns, how GreenTouch™ illustrates a successful co-creative platform and how, ultimately access to broadband must be a top public policy priority for inclusive global sustainability.
• The overriding theme was the need for business to work with policy makers and how regulation was needed to improve efficiency of the world economy.
• I stressed the fact that ICT is a mandatory enabler if we want to succeed in time. This also requires ICT to be more and more efficient as it has to be more and more ubiquitous (internet of things, cloud, etc.).
• You can read the BASD closing panel summary (PDF) or see my presentation (Slideshare)

Here are the topics we discussed among participants:

The technology required for making a difference will mean leapfrogging for many. It is a serious challenge, but we can make it with the right innovation models (e.g. GreenTouch™) that include meaningful collaboration. Unfortunately, we are not going fast enough because of financial and economic roadblocks. And this is where UN agencies, EU/global policy makers can help by providing appropriate policy support and incentives (including carbon pricing).

For example, procurement decisions are still largely driven by CAPEX based criteria. The pressure of interim quarterly reports often times reflect short term indicators, rather than strategically obtained results.

Therefore, even if the best technology is available, deployment is hindered by those limited by CAPEX only based decisions. This short term vision translates into middle to long term ROI and at best, moderate Green improvements. So we need to demonstrate how technology AND corresponding incentives/standards/metrics and policies to help industries/countries leverage their investment in green technology. (note – this puts more of a responsibility on us, re: implementation, can stick to simple ‘investment’ if you prefer).

In connection with Green investments, it is critical for ICT providers to ensure that emerging countries are launched intelligently from the start.  For instance, where there is no real or poor energy grid, we must build smart grids from the beginning. ICT is a key player in that context and must be involved from the start.

For further discussion, we, the ICT sector, need to better explain our offering to the sustainable development community, which is also helping to mitigate and adapt to the challenges of climate change. We need advocate in a louder and clearer way than ever before, our potential to the organizations (UN, ICC, EU, etc.).

Bottom line, we have an enormous and still relatively untapped potential, to dramatically help other economic sectors to be greener. Further to this, relaxing the roadblocks related to CAPEX will create jobs. The overall balance will be quite positive since we create jobs on one hand, whereas lagging will make the cost of coping with climate change growing exponentially with time.

Big day today with the launch of a new venture fund dedicated to telecoms!

Managed by Innovacom, one of the top five VCs in France, the Technocom 2 fund will provide over €30m in seed funding for new start-ups in France in areas including next generation networks, M2M, cloud, big data and other areas of interest to us.  Between 15-20 companies will be launched over the next 3-4 years from this fund.

We are investing alongside Orange, Group SEB and Soitec with a hefty chunk of government funding from CDC Entreprises.  The launch of this fund represents another powerful example of co-creation for Alcatel-Lucent with our close customers and other industrial partners.  Increasingly, companies are realizing that there is need to address and manage innovation originating outside of their traditional R&D structures.  Venture funds, incubators, joint collaborations are becoming the norm in the IT and telco industries with announcements almost every day.  AT&T has the Foundry initiative that we are also involved in, Orange recently launched another €300m late stage investment fund alongside Publicis for applications and web commerce, Saudi Telecom have just launched a €100m fund (also in France), Vodafone, DT, Qualcomm & Google all have their own active corporate funds etc.

The Technocom 2 fund will focus (but not exclusively) on start-ups coming out of the French research environment where there are strong centers of competence in telco and IT and where existing incubators provide the basic elements needed to get new companies off the ground.   Partners such as INRIA and Institut Telecom have a good track record in launching companies that can innovate in areas of interest for us.  In addition to providing funding via Technocom 2, Alcatel-Lucent will mentor and work with the companies that show strong promise as potential technology partners for us.   And we also want to be an active partner in proposing companies that could be candidates for funding – so keep your eyes open!

We’re very pleased to be part of this fund alongside Orange.  In addition to being a major supplier to Orange, we have many long term links in R&D including the partnership between Bell Labs and Orange Labs.  All of these efforts increase our day to day interactions with the client and help position ourselves as more than just a supplier but as a real strategic partner that understands the longer term positioning of our client.  This is going to be another building brick for that relationship.

It’s also worth understanding how this fits in with other initiatives in developing the digital economy in France.  Some of you may have heard of the “Grand Emprunt” (the Big Loan!) launched by the government to provide €35Bn for development of the digital economy in France including €2Bn for rural broadband.  Other projects benefitting from this initiative include joint R&D ventures in cloud, smart grid and digital economy and creation of new IT and telco research centers SystemX in Paris and B-Com in Brittany.

Encouraging the creation of new companies through the VC environment is a key part of this and an envelope of €400m in the “Grand Emprunt” has been provided to create a fund of funds known as the “Fond Nationals d’Amorçage” run by CDC Enterprises to launch new venture funds and to stimulate job creation and new innovative businesses. Technocom 2 is one of the very first funds to be launched using this money and puts Alcatel-Lucent amongst the leaders in this new wave of French VC funds.

Now, we just have to find the best companies that could use our support … and with a deal flow of around 500 companies per year to evaluate we should be busy!

Read the press release (PDF, English version on page 3)

The OIF demo test team

By Jim Jones, Optics Solutions Marketing Manager, Alcatel-Lucent & President of Optical Internetworking Forum

For the last 3 months we were a part of the 2012 Optical Internetworking Forum (OIF) interoperability demo, testing the latest cutting-edge technology with 8 equipment vendors in 4 service provider labs in the US, France, Germany and Japan. The OIF event, one of the biggest global testing demos of its kind, brings together competing vendors, their latest gear into services providers labs so they get a firsthand look at how it all works.

Equipment arrived in December, testing started in January and it finished in March. Preparing for the test started even earlier, with specs and test plans being developed in August. The hours are long, and since we do concurrent testing between labs, it’s the middle of the night in at least one of the labs. It’s demanding work, but it’s also exciting because we know we’re among the first to implement and test these leading-edge technologies. And it’s a great mix of people and expertise, including system vendors, software stack vendors, test equipment vendors and service provider technical experts

Alcatel-Lucent brought its 1830 PSS-64 (our flagship optical switching platform) into the Verizon and Deutsche Telekom labs for the event. This year’s demo covered Ethernet Services over Optical Transport Network (OTN) Transport.

So why would vendors and carriers invest this much in time and resources?

Because they believe in the importance this technology brings to next generation transport networks. Vendors also realize they need to work with competitors to offer their customers products and technologies that interwork. But at the same time, each vendor is hoping to differentiate themselves. We think we did just that with our 1830 PSS and its Multi-layer control plane. Why? Because we supported the most demanding and critical function in the network – the “UNI-N” that is a gateway between the packet (Ethernet) and optical (OTN) worlds. We’re the only vendor that supported data plane and control plane for the UNI-N, in multiple carrier labs. And Alcatel-Lucent is the only vendor to have participated in all prior OIF demos, dating back to 2001.

Now that it’s done, everyone in the demo has learned a lot. They’ve also gotten a head-start in implementing this technology and can be the first to make it operational. That’s one important goal that OIF emphasizes– they’re not just science projects to look at cool technologies. They’re important steps that bring the technology out of the labs and into operational networks. And we’re proud of the role we played in this event.

Read more about Ethernet Services over OTN Interoperability in this TechZine article.

Philippe Camus at the FABFEST conference

A look back at the FABFEST lunch debate chaired by Philippe Camus and Jean-Bernard Levy on Tuesday, April 3rd.

Over the years, the changing digital landscape has gradually blurred the line between the previously distinct worlds of Media, Telecoms and Internet.

The 2012 edition of FABFEST (check out the event website), an event that brings together players from all of these fields, closed with a debate between sector professionals and government stakeholders on how they see the future of original creation on digital distribution platforms and networks. The debate was led by Fabienne Schmitt, co-head of the High Tech Media department for the French financial newspaper Les Échos.

As network specialists, Alcatel-Lucent believes that developing high-speed infrastructures and networks encourages “creativity and imagination”. “As soon as people have access to high-speed broadband, their needs change and they develop new ways of using it,” explains Mr Philippe Camus, chairman of the board of directors. However, he feels that Europe is lagging behind other regions such as the United States who are already deploying the new equipment. Mr Jean-Bernard Levy, chairman of Vivendi’s management board, would tend to agree that Europe is struggling to keep up with the digital agenda. The key question is how to finance the infrastructures. Last July, Mr Levy, along with Mr René Obermann, CEO of Deutsche Telekom, and Ben Verwaayen, CEO of Alcatel-Lucent, presented 11 proposals to the European Commission on the issues of high-speed internet and the goals for 2020. Particularly noteworthy was the proposal to set up a two-sided market model to draw on funding from both end users and “platforms that use infrastructures to transport content”.

The event was attended by French and European officials who are influential in the areas of telecommunications and culture (Corinne Erhel, Franck Riester, Marie-Thérèse Sanchez-Schmid, etc.) as well as institutional stakeholders (Hadopi, CNC, SACD, SACEM, etc.), artists, researchers and experts who work on these issues on a daily basis.

As pioneers in digital innovation, we were more than happy to meet with other major players from the world of Web (Orange, Google) and the creative industries (Vivendi, Sacem, SACD, French Ministry of Culture, etc.).

Alcatel-Lucent is proud to be at the origin of an event which puts a new focus on how applications, services and technological innovation can enhance the reach and sustainability of cultural diversity and strengthen debate and democracy.

I recently participated at the Boao Forum in Asia. Boao is a forum for leaders from government, business and academia to share their thoughts on pressing issues in Asia and the world.

At this year’s Forum, China’s Vice Premier Li Keqiang, – one of the senior next generation leaders – made it clear that the government intends to continue to open up the economy and invest in the quality of its citizens’ lives.

He and many participants talked about the fact the Chinese economy is slowing down for the first time in decades. Growth will be 7.5%. There was a lot of talk about the impact of this slower growth rate and the relationship between China and the rest of the world.  The interdependence and economic slowdown – particularly in Europe – has had an impact on Chinese exports. However China’s trade with emerging markets and the US will mitigate – to some extent – the crisis in Europe.

Listen to this podcast with Rajeev about the Boao Forum:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Politicians, in the midst of a leadership change, stressed their focus over the next five years will be on strengthening China by stimulating demand through consumption and focusing on new industries like biotech, green energy and telecommunications.  They made it clear our industry is as relevant to China’s next stage of economic development as ever. It is about broadband and creating economic opportunities.  Topics like urbanization – in particular the role of ICT and communications infrastructure in building and enabling smart cities are important in China and the rest of the world. They are areas where we can add value.

While at the Forum, I joined a panel titled “Cloud, mobility and social media, changing business, changing life”.  The panel discussion highlighted the potential for our industry and the impact of social connectivity on people’s lives.  The critical challenge that a number of Chinese entrepreneurs highlighted was the need for trust – not only in one another but in the infrastructure.

I stressed that cloud business models, supported by a strong network, will drive productivity and economic growth.  This is not only good for entrepreneurs – it also benefits people all over the world.

It was a lively panel discussion with tech business leaders. I was glad to see some of students from Hainan University participating.

As I left Boao Forum and thought about the messages I heard from politicians, business leaders, and students, it is clear to me that what we do it important to China’s economic and social growth. They will invest in their digital economy and we can — and are helping — build it.

By Debbie Fisher, Market and Consumer Insight, Alcatel-Lucent.

As we continue our blog series around smart cities, research now shifts to the beautiful city of Zurich — best known by many for being the city with the highest cost of living. But to the citizens of Zurich, their city is one that today offers a high quality of life. And given this positive view, it’s no surprise that citizens are also very satisfied with the city’s overall “smartness.” This view is backed up not only by local residents, but also reported in Mercer’s 2011 Quality of Living ranking.

I’ve just returned from Zurich where we interviewed several citizens on their definition and vision of a smart city. As well we asked which services they thought could make a difference in their lives. Along with unseasonably warm weather, I heard what I can best describe as the “sunny,” satisfied disposition of Zurich citizens. The most commonly repeated phrase seemed to be “I have everything I need.” We’re proud to hear that our customer EWZ, via its ewz.zürinet, plays an important part in providing residents with the needed infrastructure. Internet access is nearly ubiquitous and allows for a virtual workplace. Swiss Railway and Zurich Traffic apps are already available for iPhone users and support the heavily used, efficient trams and trains.

But as we probed further with several of these satisfied citizens, we did hear some innovative ideas that caught my attention. The first one I’ll call Pedal Power. Keen interest in energy efficiency and eco-sustainability underlies this idea to have inhabitants report regularly to a local health club facility to ride a bike or “pedal” to help produce clean energy. There’s a double benefit — people stay fit and active while contributing to society’s energy needs. Very clever indeed!

Another insight came from a young father who expressed his support for the investments being made in fiber across the city and sees this as key to long-term success. He spoke of the idea of connecting pharmacies, patients, and doctors to improve health care, virtual shopping, and video communication as the vehicle of choice over SMS. But at the same time, these services need to be balanced so people don’t lose the social contact they gain by interacting with each other — face to face, person to person.

This feeling was echoed by another who suggested that new services are nice, but let’s not neglect the fact that customer experience is key…and for some providers, deserves more attention than investments in new services. Translation: Fix what you do today before you offer something new.

Maybe it has something to do with the advent of spring, but I left Zurich with a smile and I was glad to hear that its residents felt safe, secure, and happy that they were living in a smart city that delivers on their expectations for a high quality of life.

Watch for more blog posts on what we’re hearing from people around the globe and stay tuned for our detailed analysis on what we learned during our interviews later this year. If you’re new to joining the topic (or just want to learn more), check out our initial study which kicked off this Smart City project —“Getting Smart about Smart Cities”

For an exclusive and limited access to download our Market Analysis and Executive Summary please visit our web site at www.alcatel-lucent.com/mci.