Stimulate Business Prosperity in the 5G Era

It is four years since the commercial launch of 5G, and the digital industry is now driving the digitalization of other industries, while the digital economy is boosting the transformation of the real economy. Through ICT infrastructure innovation and upgrade, carriers can realize greater business value, while expanding the development and application of ICT technologies across more industries. The seamless flow of data across areas like governance, circulation, and integrated applications has allowed factors of production to efficiently combine, connect, and circulate throughout the real economy, inducing production, distribution, and consumption. The integration of the digital and real worlds has transitioned into a new period of intelligent digital economy. From 2G, 3G, and 4G to 5G, we have witnessed the enormous economic value of ICT innovation.

As 5G enters a new phase, digital application innovations driven by 5G, AI, and cloud computing present carriers with new strategic opportunities. Furthermore, emerging business models for new application scenarios will enable new growth across industries. Moving forward, industry players must cooperate more around new 5G scenarios, applications, and technologies to extend the boundaries of 5G services, shape a thriving 5G industry ecosystem, and realize 5G's potential.

•First, as 5G empowers myriad industries, many new 5G application scenarios emerge, such as rural live stream economy, digital high-speed rail, and 5G industry private lines. These expand the boundaries of 5G services and enlarge the prospects of 5G.
•Second, while tapping into new 5G scenarios, building and enriching new 5G applications is particularly important. New applications, such as HDR Vivid video, glasses-free 3D, and New Calling, are all building momentum, with related ecosystems rapidly growing. For example, Huawei's Go3D solution employs AI-based deep learning to make 2D-to-3D conversion 100 times more efficient. More 3D content, 3D devices with better experiences, and more capable networks mean the glasses-free 3D industry possesses enormous potential.
•Finally, huge demand for new 5G-network capabilities is emerging as we transition from connecting people to connecting things, from communications to integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), and from terrestrial to aerial and transoceanic. RedCap and passive IoT technologies will accelerate the connectivity of everything. RedCap is already mature in terms of chips, modules, and devices, and has been used in commercial 5G deployment in scenarios like power grids and industrial data collection. The number of commercial devices that natively support RedCap is expected to exceed 50 by the end of 2023. Passive IoT has inherent advantages such as passivity, wide coverage, low costs, and support for positioning. It can also be extensively used throughout the warehousing, logistics, and manufacturing industries, among many others, greatly improving production efficiency. ISAC technology expands 5G capabilities to enable sensing applications in the sea, on the ground, and in the air. By leveraging millimeter-wave radar and existing spectrum resources, ISAC is already capable of detection over a distance of 20 km, while its sensing accuracy has been steadily improving. This will greatly benefit the development of smart ocean, smart transportation, and the low-altitude space economy.

As a key novel infrastructure of the digital economy, 5G development is at a tipping point for continuing to stimulate business prosperity. It is vital to accelerate evolution towards the 5.5G era to meet requirements for deterministic experience of the Internet of People (IoP), Internet of Vehicles (IoV), and Internet of Things (IoT). This will support ongoing innovation across the industry value chain and the intelligent digital transformation of society at large. Huawei is committed to working alongside customers and industry partners to realize a prosperous 5G era, boost 5.5G commercialization, and stride towards an ultra-broadband, green, and intelligent future.

By Liu Kang,
President, Global Carrier Marketing & Solution Sales
Huawei