Huawei's Peng Song: Building connectivity competitiveness based on the CAF model to create new growth

On October 19, the 7th Global Ultra-Broadband Forum (Ultra-Broadband Forum 2021) opened in Dubai. During the event, Peng Song, President of Huawei's Carrier BG Marketing and Solution Sales Department, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Connectivity +, New Growth", defining and deeply discussing the CAF (Coverage/Architecture/Fusion) model. Peng Song pointed out: "Connectivity will usher in huge opportunities, and building network competitiveness based on the CAF model is key for operators."

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Peng Song, President of Huawei's Carrier BG Marketing and Solution Sales Department, delivered a keynote speech

The past year was a challenging year, but also a year full of opportunities. The needs of families and businesses are undergoing tremendous changes. Families have evolved from being a single entertainment center to being diversified, taking on multiple functions such as education, office, and trade. Enterprises’ connections are no longer solely focused on bandwidth, but are beginning to move from CT to OT, showing diversified development. The extension and integration of connections are the main themes of connection+. Against the backdrop of the accelerating digitalization process in various countries and the re-recognition of the value of connections by society, how can we promote and accelerate the downward extension of connections and the upward integration of connections, maximize the value of connections, and create new growth?

Based on this, Peng Song gave an in-depth definition of the CAF model at the meeting. “C” stands for Coverage, “F” stands for Fusion, and “A” stands for Architecture.

Coverage: It means to explore how to extend connectivity to homes and businesses based on the present situation, meet new needs, and realize business value. Based on the changes in the needs of homes and businesses, on the basis of expanding coverage, operators need to extend connectivity to every room and terminal in the home, and to the production system of enterprises, from one line to one network, to increase the number of connections and enhance user stickiness, and create greater business opportunities.

In the home scenario, Peng Song proposed to promote the extension of home connections from two aspects: first, using the method of integrated business area planning and the leading AirPON and Digital Quick ODN solutions to accelerate fiber coverage and extend fiber to the home; second, in the home network part, he pointed out that from FTTH (Fibre to the Home) to FTTR (Fibre to the Room), extending fiber to the room will bring new imagination. While enhancing user stickiness, it is more important to create a digital entrance for the home and provide possibilities for the development of smart services.

In the enterprise scenario, it is not only necessary to ensure the SLA and differentiation of dedicated lines, but more importantly, to use advanced connection technology to extend dedicated lines to the enterprise's OT. This can solve many problems faced by traditional enterprises, such as PLC remote control problems in steel companies and fault location problems in mines, and can bring about a qualitative leap in the company's production efficiency and experience.

Fusion: Looking to the future, we will explore how connectivity can be integrated with the cloud to enable industry digitalization. Digitalization is the biggest opportunity for the future development of ICT, and it has now moved from concept to practice. It is undeniable that the cloud is the core of digitalization, but connectivity also plays a very critical role. The Fusion mentioned by Peng Song here represents that connectivity must be born for the cloud, serve enterprises to migrate to the cloud, and build the ability to integrate with the cloud. In this process, operators have a lot to do.

Fusion is divided into two stages. The first stage is that connections must be born for the cloud. It has three key words: "fast", which means building an intelligent cloud on the enterprise side to achieve rapid access to the cloud; "multi-cloud interconnection", which means enabling SRv6 on the backbone side to achieve one-line access to multi-cloud connections; "determinism", which means creating network slicing and providing certainty.

The second phase of Fusion is to gradually build an ecosystem by integrating connectivity and cloud. This is the most difficult, but also the most valuable part. It requires the atomization and openness of network capabilities to achieve cloud-to-network and network-to-cloud.

Architecture: Focus on exploring what kind of network architecture should be built to support current and future business success. Peng Song proposed a future-oriented network evolution, which requires making the network architecture more flexible through the Spine-Leaf approach, using technologies such as copper-to-optical and OXC to make network services greener, and introducing automation in operation and maintenance to optimize OPEX. Huawei continues to explore and innovate in technologies such as OXC, SRv6, and ADN, supporting the development of the architecture base.

"Words are leaves, actions are fruits." Peng Song quoted an Arabic proverb to end his keynote speech. He said, "Even in the face of huge external pressure, Huawei will continue to focus on innovation in connectivity technology, improve its own skills, and help operators achieve current and future business success."