Above: Ryan Ding, Executive Director of Huawei and CEO of the Carrier Business Group.
Huawei urged the global telecom industry to share best practices and work together for the future of 5G and Artificial Intelligence (AI) at the 11th Huawei User Group Meeting.
This year’s meeting, held from June 24th to 25th in Wuzhen, China, saw a gathering of more than 500 guests from the telecom industry, including China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, Vodafone, Orange, Elisa (Finland), and Etisalat (UAE).
Focusing on the theme, “Redefining the Future Together”, in-depth discussions on how to accelerate the evolution to 5G and how to implement intelligent operations through AI were held. In addition, top issues of 2019 were identified for continuous improvement.
Ding pointed out: “Cyber security and privacy protection are our top priorities. We ensure the security of carriers’ 5G networks with our secure products and trusted services.” Secure products is made possible through Huawei’s active membership of 3GPP’s 5G Security Assurance Specification project. Huawei also supports the Network Equipment Security Assurance Scheme (NESAS), jointly defined by 3GPP and GSMA. To ensure trusted services, Huawei follows the ISO 27001 and actively applies for more third-party security certifications.
“Huawei’s vision is to bring digital to every person, home and organization for a fully connected, intelligent world. 5G will be a key enabling technology for this world. We will continue to increase investment in 5G and work with our customers and partners to make this vision a reality,” Ding concluded.
Over the past 30 years, Huawei has operated in over 170 countries and regions around the world, deployed 7.4 million FTTx lines and built more than 800 cloud data centers. Huawei has assured more than 200 major events and maintained more than 1500 networks and their smooth operations. Huawei has worked with 17 out of the top 30 global CSPs on customer experience management and 24 CSPs on excellent network improvement.
Huawei User Group Meeting has been held for 11 consecutive years, involving nearly 3,000 customers. For 11 years, the Huawei User Group Meeting Advisory Board, consisting of 12 customers and over 440 volunteer customers, have been collaborating with Huawei project teams, and they have participated in more than 50 top issue improvement projects. With their help, Huawei continuously improves the quality of its products, services, and solutions, and continuously creates value for customers.
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In a subsequent press statement, Huawei gave details on its 5G deployment.
Ken Hu speaking at Mobile World Congress. Photo courtesy Huawei.
To date, Huawei has signed 50 commercial contracts for 5G around the world, and has shipped over 150,000 5G base stations.
This was revealed by Huawei Deputy Chair Ken Hu at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai 2019, currently taking place in China, as he gave an update on Huawei’s progress in 5G deployment and shared concrete examples of how service innovation and cross-industry collaboration were driving the next phase of growth in 5G.
“This [the number of international 5G base station shipments] is far more than our industry peers. Many operators around the world, including those from Europe, the Middle East, and Asia Pacific, are racing to deploy their 5G networks,” Hu said, also noting that China had officially issued its 5G licenses earlier in June.
“This marks the beginning of 5G commercialization in the world’s largest mobile communications market,” he said. “I believe China will help set a great example for the rest of the world, and provide useful insight for deployment in other regions.”
Earlier at MWC, Ryan Ding, Executive Director of the Board and President of the Carrier Business Group of Huawei said that globally, 5G was gaining strong momentum in its commercial adoption.
“Since the first half of this year, a good number of countries, including South Korea, UK, Switzerland, Italy, and Kuwait, have commercially launched 5G networks, two-thirds of which were constructed by Huawei,” Ding said. “Industries are starting to embrace 5G and 5G is starting to explode into prominence by promoting a comprehensive digital transformation and improving efficiency in many industries.
“Huawei’s modular and full-series solutions will put operators in unique positions to build green, converged, and ultra-lean 5G commercial networks that drive continuous growth,” Ding added.
Hu said that Huawei’s heavy investment into R&D – with the company holding over 2,500 standard essential patents for 5G: roughly 20% of all 5G patents in the world – was what helped the company to stay ahead.
“First, we invested early. We started 5G research as early as 2009,” Hu said. “That’s back when 4G was just starting to see commercial deployment.
“Secondly, we invested heavily, and continue to do so. Over the past ten years, we have invested $4 billion dollars in 5G.
“Thirdly, we invested deeply. That’s what sets us apart from our competitors. When we began 5G research, there were no standards to speak of. We had to basically start from scratch…. Products are only the results you see at the tail end of a very long process. So in the beginning we focused on standards development and basic research in chips, materials and algorithms.”
He said that while building 5G networks were the foundation, making 5G a commercial success would rely heavily on services: “5G-enabled service innovation will help us push network performance to the next level, and help operators get greater returns on their 5G investment.”
Hu pinpointed some of the many industries which would greatly benefit from 5G application, such as the media industry, making live broadcasting more versatile and cost effective with the use of a 5G backpack and, in it, a 5G CPE. He also mentioned successful 5G application in the power industry, such as grid protection, drone inspections and smart metering.
But, Hu said, innovation was not just about technology. He said that for 5G to be successful the focus must be on making 5G easier to operate, more affordable, and simpler to deploy – currently a Huawei 5G base station can be installed by only two people within two hours, significantly reducing deployment costs and in half the time of a 4G base station installation.
He also cited 5G’s success lying in its ability to support the unique connectivity needs of each sector.
“5G will play a pivotal role in the digitization of all industries,” he said. “As technology providers, we need to work across boundaries to better understand the business scenarios and needs of different industries.”
Hu concluded: “5G is here. We will put our shoulders to the wheel and work with our partners to drive greater collaboration. Together, we can use the power of 5G to help all industries go digital.”
