BUDAPEST, Oct 26. (Xinhua) -- Leading Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corporation on Thursday presented highlights of its Smart City program, suitable for public administrations and governments, to the central Hungarian county of Pest.
"Hungary is a country that wants to become more and more competitive for the investors, and with Smart City programs, the country and its cities can become much more convenient and efficient for foreign investors," Liu Xiaokang, CEO of ZTE Hungary told Xinhua, in a short break of the event.
"We are in negotiations with several cities, some from Pest County, some from others parts of Hungary, to provide them with solutions from the fields of transportation, education, healthcare, administration," Liu added, underlining that he was looking forward to good results.
In September, the Chinese telecommunication giant presented the details of its revolutionary 5G developments in Budapest at a professional conference.
Liu said with the 5G network development, the Smart City solution can be have more form and content: "Under this technology, we can bring lots of new ICT solutions, as 5G has a huge data stream per second, so along this technology, new applications and solutions can become real."
"We are in a 200 year-old building, but we live in the future, and ZTE is the creator of future," said Istvan Szabo, the president of the county assembly, in front of diplomats, business men, public servants and journalists.
"I had the chance to see how a Smart City functions in China's Yin Chuan, and I had the chance to observe first hand what ZTE was doing: shaping the future," he said.
Szabo explained that ZTE already has a pioneer program of Smart Parking system in Szentendre, a small town near Budapest, but "this is just the start," as he put it. "We need to upgrade our cities to the level of the 21st century, but in order to bring changes to the smaller towns, we must begin to change our cities," he explained.
He also told that it was important to understand that technology was in the service of people, and not the other way around.
ZTE's Vice President Li Ming said ZTE spent 10 percent of its yearly revenue on R&D. "In the first six months of 2017 only, this means more than one billion U.S. dollars," he stressed.
In his words, the Smart City program was not only to deliver excellence, but also to "provide cutting edge technology, while offering advertising and smart city solutions".
"Europe is a pioneer of technology, a leader of the new digital society, and through its EU horizon 2020 program, it encourages public investments in the fast network infrastructure aspect as it is technical foundation of Smart city Programs," he said. "ZTE wants to be part of that."
He said he believed that ZTE'S technology could help Hungary "set up a higher living standard, in order to make Hungary smarter and better".
