At Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2024, James Chen, President, Carrier Business at Huawei, gave a keynote speech entitled “Secondary 5G Innovation: Charting a New Course for Business Success”.
While primary innovation unleashes tech dividends, secondary innovation accelerates business success – and there are numerous examples of this from throughout history.
The compass was invented in China, making it possible for humankind to travel the sea. In the 16th century, Magellan completed his first round-the-world voyage. Later, with the help of high-speed gyroscopes, navigation developed rapidly, achieving the current annual global maritime trade of US$500 billion.
As early as the days of ancient Greece, the prototype steam engine was invented, and in the 18th century Britain’s James Watt successfully improved the concept, leading to the first industrial revolution. With the invention of internal combustion engine and motor, the automobile industry achieved prosperity.
If we look at mobile communications, after the Italian scientist Marconi completed transoceanic wireless communications, with the invention of mobile phones, mobile communications completely opened up the development of mobile communications. By the end of 2023, the number of global mobile users reached 8.6 billion.
This shows that primary innovation releases technological dividends, and secondary innovation accelerates business prosperity. At present, 5G is at a historic moment of secondary innovation.
Secondary 5G innovation will supercharge experience, business, and monetization
ICT technology, represented by 5G, is accelerating its integration into all fields and links of China’s economy and society. China has built the world’s largest and most advanced 5G network. As of April, the number of 5G users in China had exceeded 880 million, accounting for 52% of the world’s total. China’s 5G base stations account for two-thirds of the world’s global base stations, and the number of 5G IoT connections exceeded 30 million. China is leading the world in terms of 5G development scale and quality.
Just as Watt’s improved steam engine opened the industrial revolution, China’s secondary 5G innovation accelerates business monetization and opens a new stage of business success from three aspects: user scenarios, network-cloud-intelligence synergy, and ecosystem collaboration.
Example: Translating inspiration into opportunity
In Kaifeng, Henan Province, there is a famous blind date show. Many young people come to sign up to find a partner, speaking up bravely to show their affections. When the show begins, the walls, the hills, and the opposite teahouse are all crowded with enthusiastic tourists, and the front row is crowded with live streamers.
Many live streamers will use multiple mobile phones, at the same time connected to multiple livestreaming platforms. If network stuttering occurs, they may lose followers. The streamers’ top concern is ensuring that they can live stream among thousands of mobile phones onsite, with high-definition, non-stuttering images. Chinese operators have found the answer to this scenario.
Scenario innovation: Reinventing the value of user groups and scenarios to accelerate multi-metric network monetization
To meet the differentiated requirements of live broadcast for network experience, 15 carriers in China have subscribed to live broadcast packages that provide heavy traffic and guarantee live video upload experience, greatly increasing their ARPU.
There are four considerations for developing live broadcast packages: first, the potential customers must be found quickly; second, the package is accurate; third, the experience is stable; fourth, the user can stay. With the large uplink and preferential network access capabilities of 5G, operators meet the specific requirements of live broadcasters in an end-to-end manner.
Live broadcast scenarios open the door to upstream network monetization. With new capabilities such as service-level acceleration, and deterministic experience, we can gradually extend to more scenarios, more people, and more applications, reconstruct the spatial and temporal value of people in scenarios, and accelerate multi-dimensional network monetization.
Integrated innovation: New Calling as a new entry to information services with network-cloud-intelligence synergy
The new call is one of the hot spots for the second innovation of 5G services: 5G + cloud + AI. Through the collaboration of network, cloud, and intelligence, converge and innovate to build a new entry point for digital services.
Its original innovation intention, based on AIGC, focuses on fun for young people, big subtitles for the elderly, real-time translation for overseas business travelers, and ultimately on ensuring a good product experience.
Of course, business success requires continuous incubation of high-value scenarios and high-quality applications, refined operation assurance, and continuous innovation of Internet marketing.
The new call service uses the dialup disk of a mobile phone as the entry, providing a HD interactive call experience, and continuously evolving to providing all-scenario information services.
The development of new calls goes through two phases. In the first phase, AIGC is used to build products based on HD call experience and expand the number of subscribers.
In the second phase, high-quality applications are built quickly by incubating high-value 2C and 2B scenarios. In the future, multiple call products will be integrated to build a full-scenario information service portal through network, cloud, and intelligent collaboration.
Cloud mobile phones have achieved a “real-like” experience. The next steps are for image resolution to be upgraded to 2K, and latency gradually reduced to 100 ms – in effect achieving the real experience.
In terms of operation, Zhejiang Cloud T Card launched one SIM card = cloud mobile phone + sponsored traffic + cloud disk + rights, and the cloud mobile phone business developed rapidly. In the next phase, Huawei will work with carriers to continuously develop ecosystem and product evolution, incubate new AI applications.
Integrated innovation: IoV with network-cloud-intelligence synergy
Unmanned delivery vehicles can flexibly avoid vehicles and pedestrians and actively identify traffic signals. More than 1000 such delivery vehicles will soon be deployed in Shenzhen. Unmanned delivery vehicles perform video backhaul and remote control through 5G networks, which will bring new opportunities for operators.
In the next five years, 100 million new online vehicles will be added worldwide every year.
In the passenger car market, 4G connectivity remains the mainstream. As cars become more and more intelligent, 5G is overwhelming, and mobile phones, homes, and cars will be deeply integrated. The high-performance eMBB module and the RedCap cost-effective module can meet the high-end and low-end connection requirements of automobile enterprises respectively.
In the commercial unmanned vehicle market, 5G large uplink has met the requirements for 1080p HD video backhaul. QoS and slicing will further ensure video backhaul and remote control.
Integrated innovation: IoVT with network-cloud-intelligence synergy
RedCap can provide the connection capability with optimal performance and cost. Currently, the core, module, and device ecosystem of RedCap is mature, and the industry traffic package has been successfully implemented.
In terms of industry, the RedCap Industry Summit was recently held in Suzhou to discuss the expansion of 5G IoT and build billion-level connections. In terms of the market, Huawei will continue to build standard products that can be quickly replicated and provide continuous coverage of 5G networks.
Collaborative innovation: E2E industry collaboration boosts video service traffic
Currently, whether consumers watch short videos, long videos, or video calls, the resolution is 540p or 720p. At a recent forum in Shanghai entitled “Enjoy HD China: AI era mobile video high-quality development forum”, Huawei proposed the “1080P silent opening” initiative to improve consumer experience, enhance VIP user stickiness, and make full use of China’s leading network capabilities.
The number of naked-eye 3D terminals is also growing rapidly, and the 3D content ecosystem is becoming mature. We hope to promote further breakthroughs in 3D content, technologies, and experiences through multi-industry alliances to achieve win-win results.
Advancing from 5G to 5.5G to unlock more business opportunities
Leading operators are moving from 5G to 5G-A. Over 30 operators have completed 5G-A technical verification and 15 operators have started commercial deployment.
5G-A enables smart bicycles to move towards vehicle-road collaboration and expands the business space from connectivity to cloud. 5G-A supports passive IoT and opens up 100 billion new IoT spaces.
5G business success is not achieved overnight. Instead, it involves exploration, practice, and innovation. Huawei is willing to work with operators and ecosystem partners to promote secondary 5G innovation and jointly usher in a new stage of 5G business success through scenario innovation, convergence innovation, and cooperative innovation.
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