Huawei's Ryan Ding: Working together to create the most successful 5G

On October 14, 2020, at the ICT Leaders Forum, Ding Yun, President and Executive Director of Huawei's Carrier BG, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Building the Most Successful 5G Together".

Ding Yun, President and Executive Director of Huawei Carrier BG

Ding Yun mentioned that China has built the world's largest 5G network. As of now, 600,000 5G base stations have been built across the country, and the number of 5G users has exceeded 150 million. However, compared with countries such as South Korea and Switzerland, which deployed 5G earlier, China's 5G business still has a lot of work to do if it wants to achieve greater success. The core goal of China's 5G in the next stage is to create the most successful 5G from the perspective of user experience and business closed loop.

What is the most successful 5G?

For operators, building the most successful 5G, in the personal business field, the goal is to achieve a closed business loop; in the industry field, it is to face new blue oceans, incubate new capabilities, and create new growth engines. Specifically:

For personal business, operators need to provide differentiated ultimate experience, upgrade consumer Internet, make users truly attracted by 5G services, promote the superposition of demographic dividend and data dividend, and realize a closed business loop.

For thousands of industries, it is necessary to go deep into the industry's blue ocean, incubate new capability bases, reconstruct industry-oriented operating platforms and service processes, and build 5G's industry business into a new growth engine for operators, truly helping the industry achieve digital transformation.

For the industry, to create the most successful 5G, from a higher social value perspective, to create the most successful 5G is to accelerate the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of industries and sectors, lay a new ICT foundation for the digital economy, and enable new infrastructure.

How can operators create the most successful 5G?

To create the most successful 5G, from the perspective of personal business, a closed business loop can be achieved in three aspects: first, open source, that is, accelerating the release of traffic dividends through innovative and differentiated applications; second, cost-saving, optimizing the operator's TCO from an overall perspective; third, looking at the present from the perspective of tomorrow, facing the potential problems such as the bill storm that 5G will bring, upgrading the current operating platform as soon as possible, improving the level of digitalization, and improving the efficiency of operations. Specifically:

First, we need to do a good job in 5G user migration. In the early stages of 5G network deployment, there is a gap in user experience, and there are inevitably "fake, dumb, and poor" problems. This requires the use of big data platforms and network optimization tools to identify problem areas with raster-level accuracy, and to locate intelligent experience problems based on expert experience libraries, so as to improve the experience of 5G users to the greatest extent.

Currently, there are over 100 million 5G users in China. However, many users have purchased 5G packages but do not use 5G phones. On the other hand, users with 5G phones may not be located in areas with 5G coverage. Overall, the matching degree between "machine", "network" and "package" is still not high. In this regard, operators need to integrate and pull together data from billing, operation and terminal sides for in-depth insights and precision marketing, and quickly improve and accelerate the matching degree between "machine", "network" and "package".

Second, through differentiated ultimate experience, 5G network can be truly used. When there are enough 5G users, the next key is to make the business really happen on the 5G network and fully release the traffic dividend of the 5G network. Applications that can bring differentiated ultimate experience to users include video, HD and interactive, 4K, 8K, VR, AR, XR, free viewpoint, cloud games, holograms, etc.

Third, maximize the value of 5G networks through network efficiency improvement and operation upgrades. Compared with 4G, the system capacity of 5G has increased by dozens of times, and the accompanying increase in power consumption has posed new challenges to the power supply systems of some sites. In this regard, operators need to use comprehensive solutions to minimize the total cost of ownership of the entire network, improve the efficiency of the entire network, and maximize the value of 5G networks without affecting the performance of the entire network.

For example, Huawei's comprehensive site-level solution can achieve extremely simple deployment of 5G sites, improve resource utilization efficiency, reduce the cost of renovating surrounding facilities such as sites, city power, and cables, and combine with intelligent operation and maintenance solutions to improve energy utilization efficiency and reduce energy consumption costs, helping customers achieve the "three exemptions and three savings" of 5G TCO.

Through Huawei's network-level comprehensive energy-saving solution (PowerStar), which uses innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence and combines multi-dimensional site-level energy-saving solutions, operators can achieve 5G multi-frequency network coordinated scheduling and energy saving while ensuring KPI stability, and can provide deep energy saving for 5G network operations.

To build the most successful 5G, in addition to connectivity, we also need to focus on computing. Data from 5G pioneer operators show that 5G has brought more than five times the growth of call bills, and the demand for IT resources such as computing and storage for new 5G services has surpassed Moore's Law. Looking at today from tomorrow, we need to consciously plan and upgrade the current operating system in advance to cope with the upcoming computing storm. Therefore, operators need to build a new digital foundation, which is characterized by general computing and high-performance computing, and heterogeneously deploy IT resources such as high-performance flash memory and distributed low-cost storage, match different IT resources according to business needs, and achieve efficient collaboration of different IT capabilities. The deployment of such a system must be based on a comprehensive solution that integrates various capabilities, such as Huawei's FusionDC, prefabricated integrated small data centers, etc., which can help operators quickly upgrade their operating systems and solve the existing gap in operational IT capabilities.

To build the most successful 5G for all industries, operators must first have an in-depth understanding of the industry. Different industries have different specific requirements for 5G. Therefore, to develop 5G industry applications, it is necessary to first clarify the capability boundaries, consolidate the capability base for serving all industries, implement a replicable business model, and actively promote ecological construction, especially the development of the application ecology. Specifically:

First, different roles in different industries determine different capability boundaries. From the overall perspective of the 5G application industry chain, operators can provide network services. If they have cloud capabilities, they can also choose the 5G+cloud service model. In some projects, they can also do SI industry system integration and assume the role of industry solution integrator.

Second, we must build end-to-end 5G industry application solution capabilities and service processes.

Incubate network capabilities for 5G industry applications, such as large uplink bandwidth, stable latency, end-to-end slicing capabilities, and more importantly, SLA service assurance. Build 5G industry-oriented operational capabilities. Based on 5G industry applications, encapsulate the ability to build, maintain, and optimize, build industry-oriented 5G agile operational capabilities, including C+, N+, and enterprise self-operation capabilities, provide professional operational services for industry solutions, break through business breakpoints in sales, construction, and maintenance, and optimize processes and organizations.

Third, a reasonable business model can accelerate the large-scale commercial development of 5G industry applications.

Operators have gained a lot of valuable experience in actively exploring business models that enable 5G in thousands of industries. For example, the 5G private network and BAF business models launched by China Mobile are very valuable attempts.

As operators expand their construction of 5G industry applications from connectivity to connectivity + computing, and then to SLA slicing, their corresponding business models will gradually transition from direct sales to a value-sharing model that combines active integration with integration. Ultimately, the business model of 5G industry applications will develop in the direction of multi-path, closed-loop, and win-win as operators choose their roles.

Fourth, unify standards and develop the ecosystem.

The development of 5G industry applications is not just the responsibility of operators. It also requires the entire industry chain to "work together as one", integrate the telecommunications industry with other industries, and form industry standards. Only in this way can the development of 5G industry applications be accelerated.

As of the end of July this year, there have been 364 5G commercial terminal devices on the market. In addition to improving the hardware ecosystem, the software application ecosystem requires the joint participation of the whole society and the whole industry to jointly create a prosperous ecosystem for 5G industry applications.

We have always had a firm belief in the future development of 5G. With the joint efforts of operators, industry partners, equipment and terminal manufacturers, and Huawei, innovation and win-win of the entire industry chain are accelerating. We can not only build China's 5G into the largest 5G, but also make China's 5G the most successful 5G. The 5G industry will surely usher in a wonderful decade!