YOFC drew close attention from the customers, partners and major industry media in PT Expo China held on September 25. The next day, Zhou Lijing, Vice President of YOFC was interviewed by the reporter of CCTIME.

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Persisting in Independent Innovation is the Key to Winning Competition

Reporter: Could you introduce main products and solutions of your company exhibited in the PT Expo?

Zhou Lijing: Based on the construction of operator network and the industry trend, our company systematically presented six scene solutions including 5G and data center. We now no longer focus on the single research and development and innovation in terms of products; instead, we strive for providing the industry and customers with whole solutions based on various network application scenes.

In the exhibition stand of our company, you could see the optical fibre infrastructure solutions in the scene of future 5G construction, from backbone network and metropolitan area network transmission to wireless access network, and from urban scene to rural scene. Our company exhibited the products including G.654.E optical fibre, indoor/outdoor photoelectric composite cable, remote optical cable of base station, micro ducts and micro cables solutions for metropolitan route shortage caused by 5G network high-density coverage, and product solutions covering the whole industry chain such as high fibre count cable with high density, ODN and 100G optical transceiver.

Besides, we also presented the solutions such as data center, smart park, smart transport, smart home and big data in response to the main investment and development of the industry. One highlight of these is smart park. At present, the network of industrial park has gradually shifted to the all-optical network framework, which needs the complete coverage of optical fibre cables. Therefore, we launched the new solution, smart park, based on all-optical network. We also took our advantage of innovative special optical fibre to launch a park safety plan based on sensing optical fibre.

Reporter: Will your company combine optical fibre and cable with the industry for transformation?

Zhou Lijing: Currently, with the rapid development of mobile internet, big data and cloud computing, technologies like artificial intelligence, internet of things and block chain derived from them gradually moves towards application, which are changing invasively the entire era. The development of digital economy has long been a global consensus. Moreover, developing digital China and digital economy is to foster new growth points and form new driving forces proposed in the 19th National Congress of Communist Party of China. So it is imperative to realize the digital transformation of enterprise.

Following the trend of this era, our company, a leading enterprise in the optical communication industry, has begun long ago to carry out smart link and has been committed to taking the lead in information transmission and smart link. "Smart Link, Better Life" is our mission. We hope that various products and solutions through independent innovation launched by our company can help to realize the digital transformation of the industry or enterprise, offer better basic services in digital economy and accelerate the development of digital economy in China and even around the world.

Reporter: Currently, China is pushing forward industrial Internet and intelligent manufacturing. What your company has attempted to do in this respect?

Zhou Lijing: Industrial Internet derives from the deep integration of informatization and industrialization. Our company always leads in the industry in terms of intelligent manufacturing and industrial Internet. In 2015, our company was identified as national first batch intelligent manufacturing pilot demonstration enterprise by MIIT. In 2016, we built the world's first intelligent manufacturing plant for optical fibre and cable industry in Qianjiang City. Besides, we have established the industrial Internet within the company, broken through information barriers and achieved the industrial connectivity from 2017. We hope that our experience in this respect can be exported as technical achievement to influence the whole industry and even promote the domestic optical fibre and cable industry to be bigger and stronger.

Reporter: YOFC is developing into an all-round enterprise having so many businesses. Has it set up a clear strategy?

Zhou Lijing: At present, our company still focuses on preform, optical fibre and cable businesses, which take a large proportion of income. The business, mainly for operators, needs to be an investment priority.

Although we have made good results in the current operator business, great market potential is expected to be tapped. First, we will seek more opportunities for products in the traditional business segments. For example, network construction needs optical fibre and cable. Moreover, operators have demands for operation and maintenance of optical fibre and cable. Our company has developed on-line monitoring equipment for optical fibre to help operators to the later management of operation and maintenance. Instead of human maintenance and monitoring, now the application of our equipment and transceivers realized the automatic management and decreased maintenance costs.

In addition, some overseas operators may have demands for system integration and service, including optical fibre and cable products and other relevant products like optical transceivers. In fact, we have own layouts in this respect.

As a result, on the whole, our strategy is quite clear and focused, whose key point is to carry out related diversified business development based on the full industry chain of optical fibre and cable industry.

Reporter: What opportunities and challenges do you think 5G will bring to the optical communication industry?

Zhou Lijing: For the opportunities, I think that 5G will certainly bring about growth in entire optical fibre and cable demands. 5G, as a dense network, has increased base stations and transmission network with expansion of bandwidth whose demands for optical fibre may grow, several times of that of 4G. In addition to 5G construction, the application of big data, cloud computing, 4K/8K ultra-clear video will also bring about a large demand for the entire transmission speed, bandwidth and traffic and accordingly for optical fibre and cable. With the advent of the era that everything is connected, Internet of Things will usher in explosive growth. Meanwhile, operators need to invest more resources to upgrade their networks. As a result, market demands will be more flourishing.

With the advent of 5G era, there are both opportunities and new challenges, such as intensified industrial competition and relatively weak product innovation in the current industry. Therefore, persisting in independent innovation is the key to winning competition.

Note: The above is from CCTIME.