du UAE

Livestreaming has become an important Internet application. China has an estimated 150 million registered livestreaming users. In some popular locations or streaming scenarios, many hosts may be present concurrently. Some may even use multiple smartphones to connect to different livestreaming platforms at the same time. Livestreamers need solid network connectivity support to ensure that their livestreams are smooth and in high definition. Otherwise, they are likely to lose some viewers and even their followers.

This means livestreaming has particular requirements for network experience. To meet these requirements, more than 15 provincial carriers in China have released livestreaming packages with a guaranteed uplink experience. These offerings have helped the carriers drastically increase their average revenue per user (ARPU).

Four factors contribute to Chinese carriers' success with livestreaming packages: the quick mining of potential customers, well-aligned selling points, rock-solid experience guarantees, and sustained user retention. Carriers are leveraging the large 5G uplink bandwidth and preferential network access capabilities to meet the specific requirements of livestreaming users.

The success of livestreaming packages has opened up new possibilities for uplink network monetization. As network capabilities continue to improve, carriers are starting to offer new service capabilities such as network acceleration at the user and service levels, deterministic experiences, and tangible experience improvement in order to extend 5G network monetization from livestreaming to even more scenarios, user groups, and applications. In this way, secondary 5G innovation is helping carriers reinvent the value of user groups and scenarios to accelerate multi metric network monetization.

New Calling and cloud phones are shaping up as new gateways to personal digital services. IoV and IoVT are creating new opportunities for industry-specific connectivity. Chinese carriers have explored the possibilities and mapped out a new development path based on 5G-cloud-AI synergy.

New Calling had attracted over 10 million users within eight months of its launch. Combining AI generated content (AIGC) with New Calling is only the beginning of nextlevel experiences. Moving forward, Huawei will work with carriers to tap into more high-value consumer-facing and business-facing scenarios. Joint operation teams are being set up to help carriers build applications that revolutionize user experiences, such as intelligent enterprise assistants that are capable of interaction. These better-quality, more appealing products will continue to attract new users and drive up the number of monthly active users (MAUs). In the future, we can integrate multiple calling products and capitalize on network-cloud-intelligence synergy to make New Calling a new gateway to information services for all scenarios.

Huawei's cloud phones became commercially available on May 17, 2023. More than 18 million people are currently using cloud phones. These cloud phones deliver a highresolution, smooth user experience – 2K resolution and a latency as low as 100 ms – rivaling that of physical phones. On top of offering exciting new products, carriers have also taken solid steps to improve operations. China Mobile Zhejiang has made a showcase with its Cloud T Card, which features one cloud phone, 1 TB of dedicated data, 1 TB of cloud disk space, and various other benefits, all on one SIM card. Within three months of launch, China Mobile Zhejiang saw a 40% increase in MAUs, and 2.5-times higher dataflow of usage (DoU). Going forward, Huawei will work with carriers to support the evolution of the ecosystem and its products, incubate new AI applications, such as AI-assisted image cropping, collaboration, and translation, and make cloud phones the new gateway to personal computing and AI applications.

IoV and IoVT have huge market potential. Reduced capability (RedCap) technology provides highperformance and cost-effective connection capabilities. Currently, RedCap has a mature ecosystem encompassing chips, modules, and devices, and it can help carriers quickly amass a portfolio of success cases. With contiguous network coverage, and alongside new capabilities like slicing and edge cloud computing, new high-value applications such as autonomous-driving model training and report recognition by AI cameras will be developed to support new IoT services for industries, such as smart manufacturing and industrial automation.

Video services, which include short videos, long videos, and video calls, typically have a resolution of 540p or 720p, meaning there is plenty of room for improvement. As part of its efforts to improve consumer experience and maximize China's network capabilities, Huawei advocated a move towards a full-HD era at the recent forum on the high-quality development of mobile video services in the AI era. Huawei also called for industry players to work together to make breakthroughs in glasses-free 3D content, technologies, and experiences, so that everyone can benefit.

Leading carriers are pioneering the transition from 5G to 5G-A. At MWC Shanghai 2024, leading 5G-A carriers, including China's three major carriers (China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom), Hong Kong Telecom, the UAE's du, and Omantel, came together for the Global Launch of the 5G-A Pioneers Program. More than 30 carriers around the world have already completed 5G-A technical verification, and 15 carriers have started 5G-A commercial deployment.

For vehicles, 5G-A extends standalone intelligence to vehicle-to-everything (V2X) intelligence, expanding business potential from connectivity to cloud and computing power. For IoT, 5G-A supports passive IoT, opening up a new space for hundreds of billions of IoT connections. For new industries, 5G-A brings even more opportunities. 5G-A provides integrated sensing and communications for the low-altitude economy, and this market is expected to be worth over CNY1 trillion in the future.

China's 5G development shows that business success is not achieved overnight. A renowned Chinese football commentator once said, "Please don't think that victory is as within reach as a dandelion on Mt. Ada's hillside." The business success of 5G and 5G-A is only possible through tireless exploration and practice, and it requires consistent innovation and development.

To sum up, I believe that a three-pronged approach is the key: We need to reinvent the value of user groups and scenarios for multi-metric network monetization, leverage network-cloud-intelligence synergy as the impetus for service development, and promote collaborative innovation such as New Video to boost traffic. Huawei will support carriers and work with industry partners to drive secondary 5G innovation, pioneer 5G-A exploration, and charter a new course for 5G business success.

Demand for both connectivity services for people, things, vehicles, industries, and homes, and for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is increasing. Such services are expected to bring huge social and economic benefits, but will also require stronger networks.

Immersive and interactive services improve connectivity experiences for individuals. More and more services for individuals are becoming cloud-based, providing 3D content, and delivering immersive experiences. We are going through breakthroughs in glasses-free 3D technology, and the related technologies such as display, tracking are developing fast, delivering natural and comfortable 3D experience. Cloud-based services like 5G cloud phones are growing fast, with cloud and devices collaborating to meet the needs for diverse applications and services. Global operators are actively verifying their ability to deliver speeds of at least 5 Gbps.

Diversified IoT connections for all scenarios boost both the quantity and quality of connections for things. 5G-A IoT will cover high-, medium-, and low-speed connections for all scenarios, and this will reduce costs and increase the number of connections. Reduced capability (RedCap) technology is on its way to being commercially adopted at scale to provide connectivity for manufacturing, in-vehicle devices, and wearables. Passive IoT is maturing and will soon be able to make consumers' lives easier by connecting everyday items such as clothes and food, while also making factory production, warehousing, and logistics more transparent and visible.

Connectivity for core production makes industries more efficient. The development of smart and flexible manufacturing is making 5G essential for the core links in production chains. 5G-A's improved capabilities like low latency, high reliability, large uplink, and accurate positioning will enable factories to go completely wireless, and this will reduce costs and improve efficiency.

Ultra-reliable smart transportation requires enhanced connectivity for vehicles. The Internet of Vehicles (IoV) will transform vehicle-cloud synergies into vehicle-road and vehicle-vehicle synergies. 5G IoV has already been verified for 95% of transportation settings. The results showed that there were 25% fewer accidents and vehicle flow speeds increased by more than 20% with 5G IoV.

Diverse-service smart homes rely on better connectivity applications for homes. Home services are diversifying from videos for display solely on TVs to easy-to-use smart appliances, click-and-play cloud gaming, and immersive 3D displays on large screens. In regions such as the Middle East, leading operators are already offering 10-gigabit home broadband to satisfy users' needs and enrich home entertainment.

ISAC innovations go beyond connectivity to unlock new business opportunities in all-domain sensing. Innovation in ISAC technology has enabled 5G-A to extend its capabilities from communications to sensing. This means that it can support a variety of applications, such as those that sense blind spots on the road, give warnings about accidents, detect marine vessels, support unmanned ships, facilitate low-altitude drone-based logistics and delivery, and assist with urban management. These ISAC applications can unlock new opportunities for economic development.

AI devices will revolutionize human-machine interactions in several ways. First, interactions will go from being touch-based to multimodal. Second, information acquisition will go from retrieved content to AI-generated content (AIGC). Third, mobile devices will go from mobile phones to AI-assistant devices and embodied AI.

AI is becoming a bigger part of everyday life and will drive a boom in mobile traffic. AIGC is becoming mainstream. AI assistants are able to go through massive amounts of documents within seconds and intelligently generate content. This has improved interaction efficiency by a factor of more than 100. AIGC will also promote the multimodal production of content such as 3D videos and provide high-quality content like short-form videos and interactive movies. In addition, each device will have more than 100 local built-in AI models which will collaborate with cloud-based foundation models in real time. This means that human-machine interactions on a device will soon evolve into 100-times more machine-machine interactions.

AI makes travel as comfortable as being at home and delivers better user experiences and higher security. With intelligent cockpit services, the amount of time that people spend watching videos in their cars is expected to increase tenfold and in-car data traffic is expected to increase a hundredfold over the next two years. Intelligent driving services will need to upload more than 100 GB of data per month and this will be used to continually train the model and improve its accuracy. In addition, millisecond-level vehicle-road collaboration will increase traffic speeds by more than 20% while also reducing the number of accidents.

AI expands the connectivity of everything and creates new value through universal and intelligent connectivity. The number of AI-assistant devices is expected to reach 5 billion by 2030. AI assistants will generate 10-times more data traffic than people do. Moreover, AI robots will be deployed in numerous industries, and are expected to serve in more than 80% of factories in developed countries by 2030.

"Networks for AI" are the foundation of the mobile AI era. Huawei offers the world's first full series of 5G-A product solutions and the first Release-18-based commercial version of 5G-A. The company is focusing its innovation on five foundational capabilities—broadband, multi-band, multi-antenna, intelligence, and green development—to help operators efficiently deploy 5G-A networks.

In a bid to improve user experience, Huawei is facilitating the evolution of all frequency bands towards 5G-A to unleash the full value of all bands and consolidate the foundation to ensure a superior network experience. First, Huawei uses technologies like carrier aggregation and multi-band serving cells (MBSC) to aggregate spectrum resources on demand and develop 5G-A pipe capabilities with ultra-high bandwidth. Second, Huawei utilizes different frequency bands and implements multi-band collaboration using technologies like uplink-downlink decoupling and flexible spectrum access (FSA) to realize multi-metric network capabilities.

To intelligently connect everything, 5G-A networks need to evolve so that they are able to support multiple functions. They need to provide ubiquitous communication, sensing, computing, and intelligent capabilities to cultivate new applications. With ISAC's submeter-level accurate sensing capability, a 3D digital map of the physical world can be generated in real time to enable services like vehicle-road collaboration and the low-altitude economy. In the future, the convergence of communications and computing will enable computing power collaboration across clouds, edges, and devices and provide edge inference capabilities on the network side. This will reduce both latency and inference costs by more than 60% and enable real-time intelligent interactions.

"AI for Networks" comprehensively improves network productivity. As networks and services evolve, networks are becoming much more complex. Embracing AI is the key to improving network quality and efficiency.

Wireless agents are powered by telecom foundation models and wireless digital twin systems. They boost 5G-A intelligence and will transform O&M processes, network experiences, and service development models to help operators improve quality and efficiency.

For service operations, wireless agents simulate multimodal data such as topological data, environmental data, and traffic distribution data in real time to generate accurate user-experience snapshots, so that operators can accurately and quickly provision services. For fixed wireless access (FWA) services, for example, wireless agents can support online experience evaluation from multiple dimensions, such as coverage, latency, and capacity. This supports on-demand service package provisioning and shortens the time required for service provisioning from up to three weeks to less than one day.

For network optimization, wireless agents use high-dimensional modeling to generate a digital twin with which they can perform over 1,000 rounds of virtual iterative verification in minutes to identify the configurations with the best possible energy saving performance and user experience.

For troubleshooting, wireless agents can understand machine data and automatically plan and orchestrate tasks. This reduces the number of alarms by 90% and makes engineer site visits more efficient by enabling them to go directly to the problem and solve it quickly.

The mobile AI era provides fertile soil for innovative applications and business models. We believe that improving the capabilities of devices, pipes, and services will benefit all industry players. The mobile AI era will also revolutionize user experience, create new business models and growth opportunities for operators, and facilitate more intelligent and efficient productivity. Let's work together in this new era for a more digitalized and intelligent world.

Driven by both new technologies and market demand, the calling business is evolving into an intelligent assistant and service platform.

First, the visualized voice calling service powered by AI-generated content (AIGC) is transforming the call interface. During an average 90-second phone call, users no long see a blank screen, but one that can display personalized content. Second, calls can serve as intelligent assistants powered by network intelligence. Users can enjoy efficient multimodal communications with features like auto transcription and real-time translation services. Third, the calling service is becoming a platform offering diverse services which can be accessed by dialing. Users can dial numbers to query and request telecom services, book a restaurant, or remotely access car insurance loss assessment services, without installing any apps. Calling will create new value for operators by enabling platform operations and this will unlock new growth potential.

New Calling saw large-scale deployment and commercial adoption in China in 2023. In the same year, it was verified in Europe, Latin America, Middle East, and Asia Pacific, and it is expected to be commercially adopted in these regions in 2024. In fact, many leading operators have already completed their commercial trials. New Calling is bound to take the world by storm and see widespread adoption in the near future.

Video services are becoming more diversified, high-definition, and social. Demands for differentiated experiences are increasing as more people access video services through a wider range of devices. Short-form video applications have taken off all around the world and are used by a vast number of people on a daily basis. By December 2023, there were 1.55 billion short-form video accounts in China.

As video creation becomes faster and videos become more high-definition, 10 gigabit speeds are becoming essential. The emergence of AIGC and many new models of XR devices are increasing the diversity of video applications. Immersive applications are expected to become a staple of everyday life. This requires networks to support 10 Gbps rates and 20 ms latency. Video services are also being increasingly integrated with social networking features. Short-form video platforms that are powered by AI can analyze users' networking behavior and provide more accurate recommendations like interest-based follower recommendations and new ways of interacting, such as real-time interactive comments.

5G-A's enhanced air interface capabilities increases user-perceived speeds from 1 Gbps to 10 Gbps.

Statistics show that China has over 150 million registered livestreaming users, including 95 million active users, and this number continues to grow at a rate of more than 10% annually. Services like cloud gaming and online conferencing are also developing rapidly. Considering how fast operators' service assurance packages are evolving, high-value users are very willing to pay for deterministic experiences. Differentiated experience monetization has already been recognized as a trend in the market. This market could be worth more than CNY10 billion. It also offers operators the opportunity to develop new operation models that go beyond data traffic monetization.

China Mobile's 5G-A aims to enhance basic network experiences and improve data rates several-fold by using the three-component carrier (3CC) aggregation capability. Network-service collaboration is expected to enable the operator's services and networks to be aware of each other by the end of 2024. Experience differentiation capabilities are expected to become available in 2025 so that the operator can deliver guaranteed experiences.

The first batch of China Mobile's 5G-A demonstration service centers will be launched in 100 cities across China. In the future, all areas will be covered by 5G-A, multi-metric 5G-A packages will be customizable, and tiered-assurance 5G-A applications will be available. China Mobile will continue working with partners to develop 100 benchmark 5G-A industry applications by the end of the year to enable production and operations in a variety of industries.

The intelligent 5G-A core network enables the intelligent connectivity of everything by integrating intelligence and distributed gateways. The 5G-A core network, powered by native intelligence, enables operator services in three areas.

First, service intelligence is the foundation and driver of New Calling. The purpose of New Calling is to make calls more interesting, informative, and useful, thereby making the dialing pad a gateway to engaging and easy-touse operator services.

In 2023, China Mobile launched a number of new services, including real-time translation, fun calling, visualized voice calling, and AI transcription. In just two months, the number of New Calling users in one province in China had increased by more than 1 million, and many of these new users were using paid services. New Calling services make communication more efficient and fun for users, while increasing data traffic and revenue for operators.

The New Calling platform is also expanding to the B2B market and hosting businesses and more third-party partners. In May 2024, China Mobile Jiangsu and Huawei jointly launched a number of New Calling-Advanced services, such as visualized voice calling+, AI customer service, and real-time voice-driven digital humans. These new applications make B2C and B2B calling services more engaging and intelligent, and improve user experience. With consistently high definition, visualized interactions, and higher efficiency, these applications will pave new pathways to success for the calling ecosystem.

50,000 private 5G and 5G-A networks are expected to be established in the B2B market, and 5G- and 5G-A-powered factories are predicted to account for more than 25% of all factories. The new MEC capabilities will drive deeper and more widespread industry digitalization. Connectivity services will also expand from workshops to production lines, and ultimately to all scenarios, enabling operators to gain access to business opportunities in various industries.

Second, network intelligence focuses on delivering differentiated user experience. Packages include experience-based benefits to meet the experience requirements of specific users, services, and scenarios. For specific users, such as subscribers to China Mobile's GoTone diamond packages, experience-based benefits are offered by default to guarantee user experience for all services and scenarios. Specific service assurance packages are available for services such as livestreaming and office services. Instant messaging assurance packages are available for specific scenarios, such as travel on high-speed trains and festivals.

The intelligent network experience assurance capabilities can overcome three common challenges that come with traditional experience monetization practices: the inability to accurately evaluate experience, unrefined assurance methods (static assurance), and unperceivable assurance. An intelligent core network can accurately evaluate user experience in real time and provide dynamic assurance accordingly. When assurance is being provided, users can see a message to this effect on their screens. Once the assurance provision ends, an experience assurance report is sent to the user by SMS. As a result, user experiences can be perceived, optimized, and monetized.

Network intelligence enables operators to go from traditional traffic monetization to experience monetization. Operators can establish an experience-based benefit market and release differentiated experience packages to monetize user experience. This is not just about technological innovation, but also about transforming operators' business models.

Third, operational intelligence is the key to operating communications networks efficiently. It also drives the automation and intelligentization of operations and maintenance. When based on telecom foundation models, operational intelligence can enable cloud-based O&M. Role-oriented copilots, which help improve staff efficiency through professional Q&A and assisted O&M, and scenario-oriented agents that can understand user intentions and automatically orchestrate tasks to fix problems in complex scenarios are also available. At a Chinese operator's proof of concept (POC) pilot site, such intelligent capabilities are used to assist with ticket closure. 80% of tickets can be handled and closed without manual assistance from staff, and this saves the operator 750 person-days per month.

The evolution from 5G core to 5G-A core not only represents technological progress, but also brings the telecom industry one step closer to being able to deliver intelligent, efficient, and personalized services. The adoption and further development of 5G-A core network technology will make future telecom networks more intelligent, reliable, and efficient, create new user experiences, and cultivate new business models and growth opportunities for operators.