In the era of informatization and digitalization, the speed and quality of networks have become key factors in promoting social development, and 2024 is not only the first year of 5G-A commercialization, but also the acceleration of F5G towards the F5G-A era. From gigabit to 10 gigabit, it not only marks a huge leap in fixed networks, but also represents the urgent demand for high-quality transportation networks and 10 gigabit optical networks in the digital era, and has become an important force leading the progress of network technology.
During MWC Shanghai 2024, the F5G-A All-Optical 10 Gigabit Industry Summit was successfully held, bringing together top experts, scholars, and business representatives in the industry to discuss and promote the commercial construction of F5G-A technology, with the aim of providing a solid network foundation for the accelerated arrival of an intelligent world.
At the end of the summit, Chen Banghua, President of Huawei's Optical Product Line, was interviewed by the media. In the sharing, Chen helped Huawei draw a clearer blueprint for F5G-A commercialization. F5G-A technology will not only bring a leap in network speed, but also achieve qualitative improvement in quality and capacity, providing more powerful and stable network support for all walks of life.
Three major leaps: F5G-A is in commercial use
With the popularization of high-definition video, large-scale online games, cloud computing, and other applications to promote the innovation of network technology, users have traditionally only required the network to meet the basic bandwidth requirements of the service, and upgraded to pursue a comfortable life experience in intelligent scenarios.
In November 2023, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) released the F5G-A standard, which significantly improves the performance of F5G's strong fixed-bandwidth eFBB, all-optical connection FFC, and high-quality experience GRE, and adds real-time resilient connection RRL, optical sensing and visualization OSV, and green and agile all-optical network GAO to meet the evolution requirements of future networks.
Under the traction of the national industrial policy, the mainland's optical broadband industry has developed at an astonishing speed. At present, the number of gigabit users has exceeded 180 million, the number of FTTR fiber-to-the-room users has exceeded 20 million, 10+ 10 gigabit cities have emerged, and 35 provincial operators have realized the commercial use of 10 gigabit optical networks, all of which mark the official entry of F5G-A all-optical 10 Gigabit into the commercial construction period.
At the same time, with the rapid maturity of a series of innovative technologies, such as 50G PON, Wi-Fi 7, FTTR+X, 400G, all-optical cross-OXC, and hybrid ASON, F5G-A is bringing three major changes to operators beyond the experience limit, across connection boundaries, and across time and space.
Specifically, the promotion of F5G-A can not only greatly stimulate the potential of intelligent applications through 10 Gigabit optical networks, but also help operators cross the experience limits of scenarios and applications, and at the same time, starting from "Connection + X", F5G-A also crosses the connection boundary, whether in the home, office, or public places, F5G-A can provide stable and high-speed network connections to meet the needs of various smart devices.
In addition, with the continuous decline of computing power, F5G-A also crosses the distance of time and space, realizes the integration of computing and network, and provides users with more efficient and flexible computing services, meeting the needs of different scenarios and providing surging computing power.
At present, China Telecom is based on all-optical network 2.0 and cloud-network convergence capabilities, AI+ empowers new digital life products, helps develop new quality productivity, and allows users to fully enjoy a smart, safe, healthy, and green digital life. China Mobile practices the concept of "computing power network", takes the lead in introducing 400G, OXC and other technologies, and builds a nationwide "Kyushu" computing power optical network, computing with light strength, computing with computing power, and continuously deepening "AI+" to empower thousands of industries. China Unicom insists on strengthening network connectivity, providing excellent quality services, making every effort to promote the high-quality development of whole-home optical broadband, and cultivating a smart home network ecosystem.
From the strategic layout of operators, it can be seen that the era of intelligence is accelerating, and intelligent applications have put forward higher requirements for the resource collaboration capabilities of cloud, pipe, edge, and device. By further promoting the construction of high-quality transportation capacity networks and strengthening computing power with networks, F5G-A will greatly improve the quality and efficiency of operators' network services.
Focus on technical architecture: Build an all-optical 10 Gigabit+ high-quality transportation network
In the digital era, the diversity and richness of the application ecosystem are crucial to attracting and retaining users, and the extensive network coverage provides a broad stage for the rich application ecosystem, which has become the main driving force for the success of the 10 Gigabit service.
Based on F5G-A all-optical 10 Gigabit+ high-quality transportation capabilities and solutions, Huawei has carried out commercial innovation practices with global operators and deployed 166 commercial sites, and the rapid development of new services has promoted new revenue growth for operators.
It is through continuous joint exploration with operators that Chen Banghua believes that for the intelligent era, operators need to build an all-optical 10 Gigabit + high-quality transportation capacity network of F5G-A, which supports ubiquitous 10 Gbps access, 1 ms ultra-low latency and 6 9 ultra-high reliability, meets the network requirements of intelligent application access for individuals, families and enterprises, as well as computing power interconnection, and gives three major technical architectures in the 10 Gigabit era.
The first is the three-dimensional joint computing backbone network. With computing power as the center of network reconstruction, the 400G ultra-high-speed and 3D Mesh three-dimensional architecture not only meets the needs of long-distance big data transmission, but also adapts to the requirements of high-speed data transmission within the city or between close areas, greatly improving the flexibility and efficiency of the transportation network, and the introduction of Hybrid ASON technology further improves the stability and reliability of the network.
The second is to hop into the metropolitan area network. The metro network architecture is upgraded from one horizontal and one vertical, and the metro core Mesh architecture is built horizontally through all-optical cross-OXC to achieve 1ms high-speed interconnection between computing devices. Vertically, the OTN is lowered to the edge, providing Nx100G access capabilities, and extending the OXC from the core to aggregation and access, greatly reducing the delay caused by photoelectric conversion and achieving 1ms service quality calculation.
Finally, there is the 10 Gigabit intelligent access network. Leverage 50G PON's 10 Gigabit all-scenario access to ensure a deterministic experience through end-to-end slicing and intelligent traffic offloading.
It is worth mentioning that, according to Chen Banghua, in order to ensure the high reliability of the network, Huawei has introduced an optical-layer ASON, which can quickly reconfigure the optical path when the network fails, ensuring continuous data transmission, thereby improving the reliability of the network from the traditional 99.99% to 99.9999%, and significantly improving the stability of the high-quality transportation network.
Postscript: Accelerate the commercial process of F5G-A and usher in the 10 Gigabit era
From the earliest copper wire transmission to today's fiber optic communication, Internet access speed has experienced a leap from tens of megabits to several megabits, and then to hundreds of gigabits, gigabits, and tens of gigabits. From connecting only home users to penetrating into thousands of industries, the application scenarios of all-optical networks have been continuously expanded, and their technologies have been continuously iterated and updated, but the core goal is still to improve user experience.
According to ITU analysis, for every 10% increase in fiber broadband penetration, the country's average annual GDP can grow by 0.25% to 1.5%. According to a study by the European Investment Bank, doubling broadband speeds could lead to GDP growth of around 0.3%.
For operators, fiber broadband has also brought sustained revenue growth to the operator's business. In the past three years, the compound growth rate of global fiber broadband revenue has been nearly 15%, and the investment in fiber broadband can drive the revenue growth of the entire telecom industry by more than 1.2 percentage points. Fiber optic networks have become one of the most critical infrastructures for the development of the digital economy.
Looking back at the development of China's gigabit optical network, China has made remarkable achievements that have attracted worldwide attention in this wave of promoting applications and applications promoting development through networks. Now, in the 10 Gigabit optical network era, the pioneers have long been gearing up to seize the first wave of opportunities in the intelligent era.
In the author's view, in this data-driven era, a step ahead in network capabilities will directly translate into a step in business development. With its higher transmission speed, lower latency and stronger data processing capabilities, the 10 Gigabit optical network is providing strong infrastructure support for the digital transformation of all walks of life, and accelerating the commercial process of F5G-A will not only help improve the overall network level and informatization of the country, but also bring tangible economic and social benefits to all walks of life.