Connectivity has become synonymous with productivity thanks to the Internet of Everything.
As industry requirements for going digital and intelligent continue to emerge one after another, and as network connection technologies continue to advance, carriers have been extending and converging connections to improve their connection capabilities, maximize the value of connections, and ultimately drive new growth.
Driven by a new round of AI transformation, the digital-intelligent transformation of industries is picking up speed, witnessing the arrival of the intelligent connection of everything. By 2026, 100 million households will choose smart home services, and the same number will use cloud video storage, boosting the valuation of the global enterprise network and cloud computing markets to exceed US$200 billion. And it is expected that by 2030, the global AI computing power will be 500 times more powerful than 10 years earlier.
Connectivity capabilities therefore need to be upgraded. But how? Richard Liu, President of Huawei's Carrier BG Marketing & Solution Sales Dept, gave Huawei's answers during UBBF 2023. In his keynote speech titled "Embracing New Opportunities with Premium Intelligent Connectivity," he proposed the concept of Premium Intelligent Connectivity and explained its five capabilities.
Five Capabilities of Premium Intelligent Connectivity Meet Digital-Intelligent Requirements of Numerous Scenarios
Premium connectivity is a familiar concept. But it becomes less familiar when the word "intelligent" is thrown into the mix. According to Richard, Premium Intelligent Connectivity means better cloud and intelligence access capabilities. In the digital-intelligent era, cloud and AI require effective connections in order to fully realize their value — without connection upgrades, they are just isolated islands. Such upgrades should therefore be considered equally important as cloud and AI.
Based on its long-term efforts and deep insights in scenarios such as smart home, enterprise digitalization, edge service innovation, and intelligent computing, Huawei believes that carriers who adopt Premium Intelligent Connectivity can meet commercial use requirements of diverse scenarios and unleash the value of industry digital-intelligent transformation. This concept involves the following five capabilities: ubiquitous gigabit connections, cloud-network-security convergence, elastic ultra-broadband, low latency, and intelligent lossless transmission.
First, as smart home and home cloud services are becoming more and more popular, carrier networks need to provide ubiquitous gigabit connections and support evolution to 10 Gbps, making it possible to provide new home service experience.
Second, cloud access and Internet access services offered to small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) require carriers to provide one-stop cloud-network-security convergence services and ultra-broadband connections in order to meet ICT requirements.
Third, as more and more enterprises are migrating their core production systems — not just their office systems — to the cloud, multi-branch and multi-cloud connections become inevitable. Carriers need to provide elastic ultra-broadband capabilities ranging from 100 Mbps to 1000 Mbps and up to 10 Gbps, safeguarding the cloudification of different enterprise services.
Fourth, the shifting of data from centralized processing to distributed computing is driving an explosive growth in the volume of data, facilitating innovation at the edge. Transport networks therefore need to be reconstructed to provide low latency and to support booming innovative services.
Fifth, in the intelligent computing era driven by AI foundation models, providing intelligent lossless transmission requires the coordinated development of transmission, computing, and storage power capabilities. In this way, new business models such as AI foundation models can develop, and digital productivity can be fully unleashed.
In summary, following the trend of cloud-based, data-driven, and intelligent transformation, connectivity determines the efficiency and quality of cloud and intelligence access in the booming industry digital-intelligent era. Carriers need to implement Premium Intelligent Connectivity in scenarios where cloud and AI are the most active — such as home, enterprise, edge, and intelligent computing scenarios — in order to meet the digital-intelligent requirements of various industries.
Huawei's Comprehensive Solutions Help Extend Business Boundaries and Stimulate New Growth
Focusing on the preceding five capabilities, Huawei has not only developed an array of comprehensive products and solutions, but also works with global carriers to bring Premium Intelligent Connectivity to multiple commercial scenarios, helping carriers extend business boundaries and stimulate new growth.
First, for smart home and home cloud services, Huawei's FTTR solution provides home-wide Wi-Fi coverage, and its XGS-PON solution meets the upstream and downstream gigabit requirements of home cloud services. Furthermore, Huawei's 50G PON solution helps carriers smoothly evolve their access networks to 10G, bringing all-optical home networks to every smart home and gigabit connections to every home cloud service. This makes it possible for carriers to deliver new home service experiences, such as intelligent light control, robot-assisted floor cleaning, elderly care, personal cloud disk, home cloud storage, and cloud gaming.
In Asia, the 1G @ Every Room package released by AIS Thailand boosts customer retention by extending the contract period to 24 months and increases the package price by 30%. Additionally, the FTTR service can also guarantee service experience of smart home business. And HKT, by deploying Huawei's XGS-PON solution, is able to launch broadband packages from gigabit to 2.5 Gbps, 5 Gbps, and 10 Gbps. With ultra-broadband capabilities, HKT can support the development of new applications such as Home Studio, metaverse, and cloud services.
Second, for the digital scenarios of SMEs, Huawei's Cloud-Network Express+ solution offers one-stop cloud-network-security services — including private line + security and private line + Wi-Fi management services— thereby helping carriers meet the cloud and Internet access requirements of SMEs.
For example, using Huawei's Cloud-Network Express+ solution to upgrade its live network services, a carrier in Southeast Asia can now provide Internet access to SMEs through one CPE without configuration. The solution also helps the carrier shorten E2E service provisioning from 5 days to 1 day, and fault demarcation from 6 hours to just 30 minutes.
Third, more and more enterprises are migrating their core production systems to the cloud. Elastic ultra-broadband is the best choice for enterprise cloud private lines. With Huawei's Multi-cloud Backbone and OTN Private Line solutions, carriers can quickly build a multi-cloud access network that can provide ultra-large bandwidth and more than 100 thousand slices, safeguarding enterprises' cloudification.
By offering an innovative SRv6 solution, Huawei helped MTN South Africa realize one-hop to multi-cloud service. Thanks to this, MTN has slashed its provisioning time of enterprise private lines by 50% and can ensure the SLA for more than 6000 enterprise applications. And a carrier deployed Huawei's OTN solution to connect scattered cloud data centers for the largest railway system in West Europe — the railway company carries more than 400 million passengers every year. It provides ultra-broadband and 99.99% reliability, setting a benchmark of business success in the transportation industry.
Fourth, to fuel edge service innovation, Huawei provides 400G + OXC technologies to help carriers build low-latency DC-centric ultra-broadband networks that can evolve to 800G and launch 10 ms-based latency services. In this way, carriers can deliver low latency and exceptional experience to every innovative edge cloud service and boost their development.
With Huawei's support, China Telecom has built the first 400G all-optical transport network in the Guangdong-Hongkong-Macao Greater Bay Area. This network forms an ultra-low latency circle of 5 ms in the Greater Bay Area, and of 10 ms in Guangdong. It enables smooth transmission of massive volumes of data between enterprises and computing centers.
Finally, for intelligent computing scenarios, Huawei provides AI Network Turbo to achieve intelligent load balancing for intra-cloud connections within DCs. And for inter-cloud connections, Huawei provides end-to-end 400G connections that can smoothly evolve to 800G. These offerings help accelerate the large-scale commercial use of computing services and bring intelligent and lossless computing power to each service.
Take the media industry as an example. Filming produces massive amounts of data, which needs to be transmitted across multiple regions. Video rendering also needs large amounts of remote computing power. China Mobile and Huawei jointly created the Data Express service to meet petabyte-scale data backhaul requirements in multiple regions and slash the response time to access computing power from hours to minutes.
Driven by Both Technology and Business, Build Premium Intelligent Connectivity for Business Success in the Digital-Intelligent Era
The preceding series of solutions and application cases are the result of iterative upgrade of connectivity technologies and business exploration of industries during their digital-intelligent transformation. Over the past few years, driven by the concept of 5.5G industry standards — both F5.5G and Net5.5G — Huawei has been working with carriers and industry standards organizations to advance industry development in both technology and business, achieving a virtuous cycle of input-output.
In terms of technology, Huawei works with carriers and industry standards organizations to advance 5.5G industry standards. Key F5.5G technologies, such as 50G PON and 400G/800G, have been fully verified in 30+ networks in Saudi Arabia and the Philippines. And Huawei has carried out joint innovation with more than 20 customers, such as China Mobile, around key Net5.5G technologies such as 400G/800G, Wi-Fi 7, and IPv6 Enhanced.
And in terms of business, Huawei works with carriers to build Premium Intelligent Connectivity and continuously deepen the commercial use of connections in smart home, enterprise digitalization, edge service innovation, and intelligent computing scenarios, continuously exploring and unleashing the value of industry digital-intelligent transformation.
As an ICT infrastructure provider with a strong presence in both the connectivity and computing fields, Huawei is fully able to build Premium Intelligent Connectivity and has a sound understanding of carriers' business strategies such as cloud-network convergence and cloud-network integration. In this way, Premium Intelligent Connectivity can be put into wide commercial use, helping carriers open up a huge space for cloud-network-intelligence services.
Looking back, industry joint innovation has elevated digital productivity and boosted digital economy. Looking ahead, Richard Liu said, "a new wave of digital intelligence transformation is on the way." From extreme to excellence, "Huawei is ready to cooperate with carriers to roll out Premium Intelligent Connectivity for mutual prosperity in the new era."
This year, a new round of AI transformation triggered by ChatGPT and its AI foundation model is redefining the paradigm of industry digital-intelligent transformation and upgrade. For the upcoming intelligent economy era, the industry has reached a basic consensus about the intelligent economy: the AI foundation model will determine its height, the data value mining will determine its depth, and the coordinated development of transmission, computing, and storage power will determine its thickness.
In this new paradigm, where the cloud is everywhere, data is flowing relentlessly, and intelligence is touching everything, the importance of network connections that determine the transmission capacity has risen to an unprecedented level. From premium connectivity to Premium Intelligent Connectivity, the brand-new transmission capacity with ubiquitous gigabit connection, cloud-network-security convergence, elastic ultra-broadband, low latency, and intelligent lossless transmission capabilities will help carriers extend business boundaries, stimulate new growth, and maximize the value of connections in the digital-intelligent era.
