Question: What does Nokia offer to Indonesian customers and enterprises?

Answer: It's very important to note that this market is evolving. Consumer services have always been important, and they will continue to be important. But the next big thing will be industrial digitalization, where we have only scratched the surface so far.

We are really looking forward to working with industrial customers, often in collaboration with operators, who will be offering the services to implement digitization projects.

We have projects ongoing already in mining and ports. They are the two natural targets, but we have a broad look at industries.

When we're talking about countries like Indonesia, mining and ports would be the natural focus areas and we have a lot of discussions ongoing in these two sectors.

It's not only about productivity, it's also about safety, sustainability, emissions, cybersecurity, data security, which are increasing in importance all the time.

Are Indonesian firms vulnerable to cyberattacks?

I don't think this is an Indonesia-specific question. In general, we need a wake-up call in terms of cybersecurity. In many places, people have been naïve, and the threats are getting more serious, which means that a network's cybersecurity cannot be an afterthought.

It needs to be built in from the beginning of the network design. And what we are doing right now is actually building cybersecurity directly into the products, into the network elements and, in some cases, directly into the chipsets that we are designing.

Our goal is to be seen as a trustworthy, reliable supplier of critical networks. We talk a lot about critical networks, which are more than just connecting consumers to Wi-Fi in entertainment services. We are talking about critical networks for enterprise sectors like mining sites, ports and power plants.

Nokia is not the only company developing 5G in Indonesia. There are Ericson, Huawei and others. Is Nokia competing with them or rather providing complementary services?

Those two companies that you mentioned are strong competitors to us in 5G. We have been strengthening our position in 5G.

We now have over 200 5G contracts with operators in different parts of the world. So our position is strong, and our goal is to further strengthen it in the future.

We are not only a mobile infrastructure company but we are very much working in the fixed network business.

Fixed broadband and mobile broadband actually complement each other, and this is one of the strengths that Nokia clearly has, that we are able to offer both of these. And then, as I already said, we have a strong focus on enterprise applications and software services.

How important are fast internet and reliable networks for economic development?

Fast and reliable networks are really the backbone of an economy. It's like electricity. I mean, it needs to be reliable. It needs to be available anytime you need it. It's a fundamental building block of an economy.

That's why our message to governments and to regulators also has been that, for example, when you talk about mobile services, you need to make sure that you make bandwidth available, and that bandwidth needs to be affordable.

So, we would hope that the governments would resist the temptation of over-taxing or overcharging for bandwidth, because that makes it possible for operators to invest a lot in coverage. Then there would be affordable services available to consumers and industries.

Should the government provide a subsidy to accelerate it?

Every country needs to make its own decision, but in general, I prefer market-based solutions.

Subsidies may work sometimes, but the better way, in this case, is really to keep taxation low enough, and then let the market economy work; then the investments will come.

What is Nokia’s role in building smart cities around the world?

We are engaging in many cities in the world on various smart city developments, and that is really important because cities will actually be driving much of this digitalization and sustainability agenda.

These two go hand in hand. We often say that there is no green without digital. And this intersection between these two megatrends is often driven by cities, where you want to create a city where there is affordable broadband connectivity available to the citizens pretty much everywhere.

There are a lot of other aspects to smart cities: smart energy, smart transportation, smart living, smart food production, maybe vertical farming and making cities self-sustaining in terms of food production. So, we are involved in many of these projects, including in vertical farming.

Jakarta plans to be a smart city and the government is planning for the new capital to be too. Do you consider being involved in specific developments in Indonesia with your technology?

I'm certain that our technology would be perfectly suitable for smart city projects in Indonesia as well. We will definitely have an interest to have discussions about how to make that capital as smart as possible.

We are already engaging with operators in such discussions, and we would love to engage with the government as well, because, as I said, we have been involved in many smart city projects in different parts of the world.

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