Viewpoint

On Day Zero of this year’s MWC Barcelona event, Huawei hosted the 5G Beyond Growth Summit. Here, Li Peng, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales & Service discussed how carriers can achieve business success in 5G and how 5.5G will further unlock the potential of networks, creating new growth opportunities

Li began by reminding the audience that it has been five years since 5G launched into global markets, and since then, the way our world is connected had changed exponentially. He noted that 5G is the fastest growing mobile technology ever. Since hitting the market in 2019, there are now over 1.6 billion 5G users globally from 302 carriers in more than 100 countries in five years. With 4G, this same milestone took seven years to reach.

Despite less than 20% of global mobile subscribers using 5G currently, this generates 30% of all global mobile traffic, which in turn accounts for a huge 40% of all mobile service revenue. To tackle this, it’s essential that carriers find new ways to monetise 5G to bring this revenue back up. Let’s take a look at some successful examples of 5G monetisation.

Because 5G can deliver up to ten times faster speeds than 4G and a lower cost-per-bit, Li continued, it results in increased investment in both home and consumer markets. In the home market, 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) has been a success, as over 150 global carriers have launched 5G FWA services, which have connected three million households. Especially for carriers in the Gulf Cooperation Council, (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE) it has become a lucrative income source.

Speed based pricing is another way to effectively monetise 5G. Charging customers different prices based on different speed tiers, has been done effectively in 21% of 5G carriers in countries such as Switzerland, Austria, UAE and Thailand. Similarly, providing more speed tiers in hotspot areas can result in monetisation. For example, a carrier in Thailand recently released a 5G Boost Mode add-on. Users can use this whenever they want to enjoy faster speeds in hotspot areas. Boost Mode plans only cost $1.4. They include 3 hours of faster speed and 5 GB of data. And these plans have increased average revenue per user (ARPU) by 20%.

Targeting plans at specific consumers is another viable monetisation option. For example, one Chinese carrier launched a plan with guaranteed uplink rates designed specifically with live streamers in mind. China has the world’s largest livestreaming market, and specifically in China’s Guangdong province, there are more than 300,000 livestream users who have increased ARPU by 70%. This model could be adapted to different types of users, such as business professionals or delivery drivers, to help monetise the experience of the existing consumer base.

New services emerging in the areas of 5.5G, AI and cloud convergence. Chinese carriers have, for example deployed services such as New Calling, cloud phone and glasses-free 3D. Since launching the services, they have over 100 million New Calling users and 12 million cloud phone users.

In the area of smart vehicles, 5G powered autonomous vehicles are being adopted in various sectors such as logistics, retail and security. In Beijing for example, 5.5G is being used to power hundreds of unmanned distribution vehicles that can travel at a top speed of 25 Km/h, whereas before it was 12Km/h. Therefore, more packages each day are able to be delivered at a faster speeds than a human employee, increasing efficiency and increasing revenues.

These are some examples of industry successes of 5G adoption and monetisation. As adoption increases and more customers are able to make use of the different opportunities that 5G can bring to both consumers and businesses. However, more work must be done to ensure than new growth in the industry is driven, to build today’s networks for tomorrow’s applications.

Li closes out the session by promising the audience, “Together with carriers, we will unlock the potential of 5G and 5.5G, and drive incredible new growth”.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Press Release

[Barcelona, Spain, February 26, 2024] Huawei hosts the Green Development Elite Club during MWC Barcelona 2024. More than 90 delegates from UNFCCC, ITU-T, and leading network operators such as Turkey Turkcell and Hong Kong Telecom (HKT) gathered together to discuss the latest developments in the building of Green Target Networks to further enable the sustainable development of the industry.

In the intelligent era, global network operators should not only fulfill the social responsibility of reducing their own carbon emissions, but also seek to help wider industry with energy conservation and efficiency improvement. Now, with the advent of enhanced computing power and artificial intelligence, network operators can not only transform their own operations to reduce carbon footprint but also enable many new 2H and 2B services to help wider society also lower its carbon footprint.

Opportunities and Challenges for the Green Development of the ICT Industry

In his opening presentation, Mr. Massamba Thioye, Project Executive of UNFCCC-GIH (UN Climate Change Global Innovation Hub), explained how the GIH organizes global industry partners to actively participate in and disseminate global thought leadership on “systemic innovation to enable green development”. Through multilateral collaboration with standards organizations, network operators, and equipment vendors from the ICT industry they hope to make breakthroughs in green innovation initiatives and green operation methods, and share best practices to support the sustainable development of humankind.

Next, Ms. Qi Shuguang, Vice Chair of ITU-T SG5 (International Telecommunications Union Study Group 5: Environment, climate change and circular economy), Vice Chief Engineer of CTTL-system in CAICT, outlined the standardization work of Sustainable Digital Transformation which is focusing on Double-Edge Nature of ICTs. On the one hand, how to minimize the negative effect of ICT, including published Recommendations on circular economy, digital product sustainable passport, sustainable data centers, smart energy solutions, Climate Actions towards Net Zero, scope3 emissions and ongoing work related to environmental impacts assessment etc. On the other hand, due to huge potential of ICT to slash global GHG emissions , Ms. Qi briefly introduced the content of ITU-L. 1480 which is on assessment of enablement effect of ICT as well as under developing standard titled“Enablement indicator of ICT to other sectors and best practices to achieve Net Zero goal”. Finally, she mentioned the collaboration between ITU and other UN organization such as UNFCCC, UNEP, ETSI on standardization work of Sustainable Digital Transformation.

Green Development Practices of Global Leading Operators

Mr. Yildiray Ornekli, Access network infrastructure associate director of the Türkiye Turkcell, was the first of two network operators presenting, sharing their green site solution. With simplified site redesign and extensive solar energy utilization, their Green Site Solution is more energy efficient and environmentally friendly, and as a side-effect, its cyber resilience is improved. Even during the major earthquake of 2023, the solution provided stable and reliable communication services to the impacted areas. Turkcell will continue to build 5,000+ green sites and 300 MW solar power plant in the future to rapidly improve wireless network coverage, introduce connectivity to unconnected areas, and help more people bridge the digital divide.

Next, Mr. Derek Chen, Engineering Operations VP at HKT, shared HKT’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2050 and provided details of their green management system. HKT’s equipment room modernization program together with AI-driven power source scheduling has already greatly improved energy efficiency and operational efficiency. Now, 80% of their equipment rooms are equipped with intelligent power-saving meter systems, saving 31.8 GWh of power and reducing carbon emissions by 10% annually. HKT also provides various green services for communities and enterprises, including smart property management, cloud computing, generative AI services, telemedicine, and marine environment monitoring. Together, these are promoting green and sustainable social development.

Beyond Imagination，Digit Create Green Future

In the closing presentation, Zhou Yu, president of Huawei Network Consulting and System Integration, announced the release of two white papers which aim to stimulate and drive increased sustainability in both telecommunications operators, and the wider industry.  The first white paper, “Green Management”, co-authored by China Mobile, Hong Kong Telecom and Huawei, proposes a management and governance framework to help network operators successfully transform to more sustainable operations. The second white paper “Green Network Evolution with Digital-Twins” introduces Huawei’s Green Network Evolution with the Digital Twin Platform (GNED), a transformative tool to helps carriers accelerate green transformation.

Mr. Zhou Yu concluded by emphasizing that with the rapid development of computing and AI capabilities, operators can provide more innovative 2C, 2H, 2B and computing services. However, this leads to faster network expansion and rapid growth of operation costs. The network is gradually going beyond the limits of “Moore’s Law.” and exceed the control of the “man”. Huawei is committed to helping operators integrate green and intelligence into networks through new digital and AI technologies, and enabling the promotion of organizations, talents, and processes, to support the evolution of network architecture from “Pyramid” to “Spindle”, achieving continuous growth of network capabilities without increasing energy consumption – Beyond Imagination.

To enable this transformation, Huawei has built many end-to-end digital capabilities based on its NetLIVE platform, such as Full-service Area Planning, Smooth and Resilience Migration and Continuous Operation. It provides operators with a comprehensive set of scenarios solutions such as Green Site Modernization, Green CO Modernization and Solar Farm etc. – Digit Create Green Future.

In the future, Huawei’s Intelligent Connectivity Integration service will build on the concept of “Less for More” – less resource for more end-services – and focus on a holistic network-wide view rather than single sites in isolation.  Huawei’s digital and AI capabilities will continue to build ever more green, efficient, resilient, secure and service-rich networks for operators, and is committed to achieving the strategic goals of green and sustainable development.

Press Release

[Barcelona, Spain, February 27, 2024] During MWC24, Huawei, together with global carriers, industry organizations, and academics, held the Digital Operations Transformation Summit 2024 to discuss how carriers accelerate digital operations transformation. Mr. Bruce Xun, President of Huawei’s Global Technical Service Dept, said, “The ’Telecom + AI’, formed with telecom cognition, digital and AI, will bring new operations mode and new service growth to carriers, creating tangible business value.”

Bruce Xun, President of Huawei’s Global Technical Service Dept.

Telecom + AI: Accelerating Transformation from Telco to Digital Intelligent Service Provider

AI has become a technology hotspot sweeping the globe. When it comes to unleashing the full potential value of AI, carriers have unique advantages based on ubiquitous connections, over 100 billion data records per day, billions of entries of telecom knowledge, decades of telecom operations experience. “Digital twin + AI” can create new operations mode, and “Converged data + AI” can drive new service growth. The in-depth collaboration of telecom and AI will accelerate carriers’ transformation to digital intelligent service providers.

 Digital Twin + AI: Creating New Operations Mode Along the Customer and Employee Journey

Along the customer journey, each operation activity focuses on customer experiences, which drives the evolution of the operations mode from network- oriented to customer- and service-oriented. Every customer can perceive the value brought by the new mode. Huawei has developed the innovative SOC + NOC intelligent O&M solution with a carrier in Asia Pacific, where O&M activities were planned, prioritized, and executed according to the actual impact on the customer. This has reduced traffic loss by 15% on average.

Along the employee journey, the new operations mode will empower every

employee by providing each of them Copilot to help them improve both efficiency and effectiveness. Mr. Xun shared many Copilot best practices for different employee roles. For example, broadband on-site and cross-selling engineers can use Copilot to accurately locate faults and solve 85% of the issues within 30 minutes. This improves the success rate of cross-selling by 10%. With assistance of Copilot, agents in the Contact Center can gain an in-depth understanding of customer requirements and satisfy customers with one-stop solution. This improves the FCR (first call resolution rate) by 30%.

Converged Data + AI: Driving New Service Growth from Connectivity as well as Beyond Connectivity

Connectivity services are the core business of carriers. Utilizing AI to analysis massive operation data, carriers can provide personalized, precise, and convenient services, maximize network monetization through multi-dimensional product design and on-demand marketing. In addition, new growth ecosystems can be built through new products, platforms, and devices. For example, intelligent payment and micro-finance solution can improve the performance of carriers’ mobile finance services. In 2023, Huawei supported a carrier in Ethiopia doubled the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) of Mobile Money and increased the total revenue by seven times.

Mr. Xun emphasized that “Telecom + AI” will accelerate carriers’ digital operations transformation. Telecom cognition is the core which includes telecom knowledge, decades of experience, and best practices. Digital is the cornerstone which includes high-quality data with suitable platforms and sufficient digital talent. AI is the accelerator which contains discriminative AI and GenAI. Combination of the three key factors will accelerate digital operations transformation and achieve breakthrough to create enormous business value.

Over the past year, Huawei has released best practices of digital operations transformation for various scenarios by working with global carriers. These practices have supported carriers achieve operations excellence, deliver ultimate user experiences, and increase the revenue from new services. Currently Huawei Services has over 20,000 experts, including more than 200 AI and data scientists. In the transformation projects, we supported global carriers implemented data governance from single-domain data to converged data to digital twin, as well as knowledge governance from documents to knowledge to high-quality corpus and vector data base. Huawei continues to make long-term investments in digital operations transformation in which we will explore, innovate and build best practices in hundreds of transformation projects.

MWC Barcelona 2024 will be held from February 26 to February 29 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1. With the 2024 commercial launch of 5.5G, Huawei is collaborating with operators and partners around the world to pursue exciting new innovation in networks, cloud, and intelligence. Together, we will drive 5G business and foster a thriving industry ecosystem, creating a new era for intelligent digital transformation. For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2024.