CWW Automotive Direct Connection Satellite, AI Glasses-Free 3D Mobile Phone, Multi-dialect Speech Recognition Model, 5G-A Network Convergence Application...... At the 2024 Mobile World Congress Shanghai (MWC Shanghai), which opened on June 26, companies competed to showcase new technologies and products.
5G has always been a hot topic at MWC, but at this year's MWC Shanghai 2024, the word 5G almost no longer appears on its own. Through the innovative application of AI in the exhibition hall and the cutting-edge topics at the forum, we found that 5G has not disappeared, but has entered the next stage of evolution - 5G-A. So, what role does AI play in the evolution from 5G to 5G-A? What are ICT companies doing?
Beyond 5G, how to play in the second half?
As the world's fastest-growing generation of mobile communication technology, more than 320 5G networks around the world have served 1.8 billion users. This year coincides with the fifth anniversary of China's 5G commercialization, and the project "Key Technology and Engineering Application of the Fifth Generation Mobile Communication System (5G)" won the first prize of China's National Science and Technology Progress Award, which is a high degree of recognition and strong promotion of 5G innovation and development by the country.
"Beyond 5G" is one of the three major technology sub-themes of MWC Shanghai 2024, and many industry experts have put forward their views on the achievements of 5G and the future development direction.
At the opening ceremony of MWC 2024 Shanghai, Zhao Zhiguo, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, announced that the mainland's 5G construction has achieved remarkable results. By the end of May 2024, the total number of 5G base stations built in China has reached 3.837 million, accounting for 60% of the total number of 5G base stations in the world, which demonstrates China's leading position in 5G network construction.
Ke Ruiwen, Chairman of China Telecom, shared China Telecom's thinking and practice on the high-quality development of 5G at the main forum. He said that China Telecom has grasped the changes in technology and market demand, especially the development trend of artificial intelligence, quantum technology and the integration of space and earth, continued to accelerate the pace of 5G innovation, accelerated the development of new services, and made a series of new progress: continuously expanding the breadth and depth of 5G coverage, achieving continuous coverage in townships and above and comprehensive access to developed administrative villages; Breakthroughs have been made in the integration of space-ground integrated networks with a number of key technologies, and the world's first to realize the direct connection of 5G mobile phones to satellite communication services; With the completion of the three major platforms of "Yunxiao", "Huiju" and "Xiyang", e Cloud, as a national cloud, has crossed the inflection point of intelligent cloud development; Recently, the world's first single dense trillion-parameter semantic model has been released, and the self-developed network model has been applied to the whole process of service delivery, monitoring and troubleshooting, maintenance and optimization, greatly improving the efficiency of cloud-network operations. Deeply integrate quantum technology with 5G to create a quantum cipher product with a world-leading user scale; Launched the 5G converged product system (5G NICES Pro) and the 5G capability Rubik's Cube platform, self-developed eCloud mining and eCloud control systems, and created a cross-industry and cross-domain e Cloud industrial Internet platform, enabling the accelerated development of 5G + industrial Internet.
Ke Ruiwen believes that artificial intelligence, as a strategic technology leading a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, is driving the information and communication industry into the era represented by "network + cloud + AI", and has become a key driving factor for 5G network innovation and application expansion. He believes that 5G is entering the second half of the full release of value through industry integration and application innovation.
Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, said that at present, the information and communication industry, as a strategic, basic and leading industry, is not only an important field for the formation of new quality productivity, but also an important support for the formation of other new quality productivity. He pointed out that from the "Internet +" launched more than ten years ago to the "5G+" launched five years ago, information technology has gradually been integrated into all aspects of people's work and life, and has also laid a solid foundation for the digital and intelligent transformation of production methods. In recent years, general artificial intelligence has made substantial progress, accelerating the transformation from the frontier of science and technology to real productivity, and promoting economic and social development from "+AI" to "AI+". China Mobile will vigorously promote the "three plans", namely the "AI+" action plan, the "BASIC6" science and technology innovation plan, and the "two new" upgrade plans, and contribute stronger mobile power to new quality productivity by continuously promoting all-round and systematic innovation. China Mobile will continue to strengthen cutting-edge innovation, face the frontier of information technology and the common needs of the industry, strengthen the research and development of key technologies such as computing network brain, multi-modal large model, privacy computing, endogenous security, etc., promote the evolution of 5G and 6G in an integrated manner, accelerate technological breakthroughs such as new network architecture and integrated synaesthesia computing, and enhance original innovation capabilities.
Chen Zhongyue, chairman of China Unicom, said that at present, operators are confused in two aspects. On the one hand, the first curve business, that is, the traditional service based on networked communication, tends to be saturated, and the total number of users has increased steadily, but the growth rate has slowed down significantly, and the increment has not increased. On the other hand, the second curve business, that is, the emerging business represented by computing network digital intelligence, although the growth rate is relatively fast, but the proportion of overall revenue is still low. In the face of a more complex market environment and fierce industry competition, operators need to explore how to leverage the resource endowment of communication networks, give full play to the comparative advantages of computing power networks, and take advantage of the momentum in the intelligent era to upgrade from communication service enterprises (Telco) to technology service enterprises. China Unicom proposes three "strengthening" paths: first, strengthen computing network innovation, based on the length of the network and the strength of computing power; The second is to strengthen digital intelligence innovation, and use the power of data to increase the wisdom of models; The third is to strengthen industrial innovation and improve the effectiveness of services with the road of integration.
Race 5G-A to expand new application space
GSMA President Mats Granryd talked about the development prospects of the mobile communications industry with photos of dragon boat racing, and he believes that dragon boat athletes need to keep the same pace and work hard at the same frequency to drive dragon boats forward, and the same is true for the telecommunications industry. "China is the world's largest 5G market, and the number of 5G connections in China is expected to exceed 1 billion by the end of this year. At the same time, China is laying the groundwork for the evolution of 5G-Advanced. ”
On June 18, 3GPP Rel-18, the first standard version of 5G-A (5G-Advanced, enhanced version of 5G), was frozen in Shanghai, which is a milestone event in the development of the 5G industry, marking 2024 as the first year of 5G-A commercialization.
It is understood that at present, more than 30 operators around the world have completed 5G-A technology verification, in terms of terminal equipment, there are nearly 20 mobile phones in the world to support multi-carrier aggregation, and many models have supported the default opening of the function. In terms of commercial applications, nearly 10 operators around the world have announced plans for 5G-A commercialization, including the launch of 5G-A packages and other services. In the 2024MWC Shanghai Pavilion, 5G-A commercial solutions and "5G+AI" integrated applications have become the focus of the audience, and 5G-A is accelerating the release of the potential of convergence and innovation in low-altitude transportation, autonomous driving, smart waters, industrial production, smart cities and other fields.
During MWC Shanghai 2024, the Global 5G-A Commercial Pilot Plan was officially launched, and six leading global operators, including China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, Hong Kong Telecom, UAE du, and Oman Telecom, joined hands with Huawei to jointly build a pioneer highland for high-quality 5G-A development and business acceleration.
Li Huidi, deputy general manager of China Mobile, believes that 5G-A is forming a "new closed loop" of "performance improvement, boundary expansion, and value innovation". Thanks to the improvement of 5G-A performance, 5G-A continues to expand its boundaries on the basis of the "triangle" of 5G capabilities, forming a "hexagonal" to build a new 5G-A network with high-speed, ubiquitous, intelligent, and deterministic services, providing users with a new service experience, injecting new development momentum into the industry, and bringing new benefits and value to society.
Tang Yongbo, deputy general manager of China Unicom, believes that the continuous promotion of 5G-A evolution and upgrading and the new leap in network capabilities are inseparable from the three major improvements of 5G-A: ultimate experience eMBB, ubiquitous IoT mMTC, and ultra-high reliability uRLLC. In terms of creating the ultimate network experience, 5G-A will achieve ultra-high speeds of 10 Gbps downlink and 1 Gbps uplink. In terms of building a 100-million-level IoT world, the 5G-A evolution of RedCap/eRedCap and Passive IoT technologies will shape a new model of the Internet of Things. In terms of improving network reliability, the 5G-A deterministic network performance will be further improved to [email protected]%, realizing that the 5G network will enter the core industrial control link.
Bi Qi, chief scientist of China Telecom Group, believes that it is time for the rapid development of 5G services, and there is still a lot of room for development in areas such as enabling the Internet of Things and vertical industries. Based on carrier aggregation technology, China Telecom proposed an innovative solution of "Super Series Technology", which uses 3.5GHz+2.1GHz 3CC technology to achieve a downlink rate of 5Gbps and an uplink rate of 1.05Gbps. In the new space of integrated deployment of space and earth, China Telecom is actively exploring the potential of 5G. Expand the pilot application of mobile phones directly connected to satellites and NR NTN, promote the development of the space-ground integration industry, and effectively support the "extension" of 5G networks to "satellite-ground integration". At low altitudes, 5G-A "communication + sensing" is integrated, a reliable and stable low-altitude communication network is quickly built with medium and low frequencies as the mainstay, and millimeter wave monitoring pilots are carried out to cultivate the low-altitude sensing market and help the low-altitude economy take off.
For the next step in the development of China's communications industry, Zhao Zhiguo said that it is necessary to adhere to the principle of moderate advancement, promote the construction of 5G and gigabit optical networks as a whole, carry out large-scale commercial use of 5G-A technology in an orderly manner, promote 5G-A network coverage in key cities and hot spots in combination with application scenarios, and accelerate the construction of intelligent computing infrastructure. Encourage the industry to actively participate in the development of 5G-A follow-up standards such as R19 and R20, promote the integration and innovation of technologies such as communication and artificial intelligence, synaesthesia, etc., and do a good job in the forward-looking layout of potential key technologies.
5G and AI are going both ways, opening a new era
While 5G-A is accelerating commercial use, AI is also bringing new space to the communications industry, and the application of generative AI on the device side is reshaping the mobile ecosystem. Whether it is the application of 5G or the technological innovation of 5G-A, AI plays an important role.
As Chen Zhongyue said, the "A" of 5G-A is both Advanced and AI. China Unicom has accelerated the promotion of "AI for 5G", carried out 5G-Advanced and space-ground integration technology innovation, and promoted the intelligent upgrade of network elements, components, topologies and systems, and built a more agile, efficient and intelligent ubiquitous intelligent network.
At the same time, China Unicom will also strengthen the "5G for AI" technology research, for the intelligent connection of all things, iterate the "5G + Internet of Things" technology, and realize the intelligence of data perception in all scenarios, connection control intelligence, and analysis and decision-making intelligence; For intelligent networked vehicles, China Unicom upgraded its "5G + vehicle-to-road cloud" capability and took the lead in applying it to tourism, ports, logistics and other scenarios. For low-altitude intelligent connectivity, China Unicom pioneered the "5G + UAV" application to achieve full network coverage in the airspace below 100 kilometers and 300 meters.
"The development of AI, especially the wide application of large industry models, will greatly expand 5G application scenarios and promote the explosive growth of industry applications." Ke Ruiwen said that based on the general model base, China Telecom has built a "1+N+M" Xingchen series large model product system, released 12 industry large models for vertical fields such as government affairs, education, and transportation, and has empowered more than 600 projects in scenarios such as grassroots governance, intelligent customer service, and smart cities. At the MWC Shanghai conference, China Telecom demonstrated a variety of AI+ applications, such as AI+ education that empowers teachers to teach accurately and students to learn their personalities; AI+ government affairs that provides accurate decision-making basis and reference for the government; AI+ emergency response to help emergency management capabilities and system modernization.
China Mobile announced that it will comprehensively promote the "AI+ Action Plan" to cultivate AI solutions for key industries such as industry, energy, and transportation, and promote the deep integration of AI into the R&D, design, manufacturing, marketing, service, and operation management of enterprises, so as to help the high-end, intelligent, and green development of the industry. Yang Jie said that China Mobile will vigorously promote "AI + plus future industry", accelerate the integrated application of multi-domain intelligence, work with industry partners to promote the coordinated development and cross-penetration of computing intelligent perception, motion intelligence, and cognitive intelligence, and accelerate the maturity of new business formats such as humanoid robots and brain-computer interfaces.
At MWC Shanghai, the convergence of 5G and AI reached unprecedented heights, showcasing a range of exciting new technologies. Two industrial mobile robots working synchronously, a visible light communication networking system based on 6G technology, an off-road vehicle equipped with satellite communication function, and a service platform to solve the problem of low-altitude flight all demonstrate the commercial potential and innovative application of 5G-A technology.
However, there are still many challenges to be solved in the implementation of AI. Xu Ziyang, President of ZTE, said that in addition to security and ethical issues, the development of generative AI also faces challenges such as computing power, energy consumption, data sets, standardization and commercial applications. In this regard, ZTE's thinking is to carry out advanced computing network, simultaneous training and promotion, and open decoupling. That is, to improve the efficiency of AI training and inference by strengthening algorithms, computing networks, and software and hardware collaboration. AI training and inference are used to promote the implementation of business cycles; "Open decoupling" accelerates standardization and works with industry chain partners to promote development.
Overall, the in-depth integration of AI and 5G technology has not only brought changes to the telecom industry, but also spawned innovative applications in many fields and promoted the development of industrial clusters. In this process, the layout of major communication technology enterprises is particularly critical, and in the face of challenges such as computing power and energy consumption, all parties in the industry chain need to work together to promote standardization and jointly explore technical solutions.