The winners of GSMA's Asia Mobile Awards (AMOs) 2023 were announced during this year's MWC Shanghai. China Unicom, Guangdong Education and Research Network (GDERNET), and Huawei took home the 5G Industry Challenge Award for their 5G education private network. The AMOs are the most prestigious awards for the connectivity industry in the Asia region, and the 5G Industry Challenge Award is created to celebrate the organizations and partnerships leveraging connectivity technologies to fuel digital transformation of industries.
Dr. Chen Dan, 5G Industry Director of Government and Enterprise Dept from China Unicom, receiving the award
The 5G education private network jointly launched by China Unicom, GDERNET, and Huawei is the first of its kind in China. Built on China Unicom's free-mobility private network, the 5G education private network allows teachers and students in 168 universities to smoothly switch between campus networks and the Internet, without needing to configure VPNs. When using campus network services, they can enjoy speeds 20 times faster than on a 4G network, which requires a VPN. They can also enjoy new experiences with various 5G smart campus applications, such as Holographic Classroom, Cloud VR Teaching, and Intelligent Teaching Affairs.
China Unicom's 5G free-mobility private network lays a solid foundation for the 5G education private network, perfectly addressing the three major challenges to the conventional campus networks: unsatisfactory service experience, inadequate data security, and difficult network management. To be specific, the 5G free-mobility private network allows for:
Superlative service experience. Leveraging China Unicom's 5G BEST Network and intelligent traffic steering capabilities, the 5G free-mobility private network enables users to smoothly switch between intranets and the Internet anytime, anywhere, without needing to change SIM cards or phone numbers.
Assured data security. The public 5G data plane is directly connected to the campus network. This, coupled with technologies such as exclusive tunnels, secondary authentication, and network slicing, ensures network security and reliability.
Easy network management. Thanks to China Unicom's 5GCtoB One Cloud, which allows intensive and Internet-based network operations, the B2B and B2C services on each campus network can be coordinated, and the networks in different regions of each university can collaborate well with one another. A self-service platform is also provided, facilitating self-maintenance, self-management, self-operation, and visualized monitoring of private campus networks.
On top of the 5G free-mobility private network, the 5G education private network is empowered with the Mobile VPN solution that features a combination of 4G UL CL traffic steering and dynamic UL CL. This contributes to wider coverage of the education private network and intelligent traffic steering among different campuses. Even in areas with insufficient 5G coverage, users can still access campus private networks seamlessly; and they can enjoy zero downtime when switching from 5G to 4G. Additionally, the network can steer traffic to the network functions nearest to the real-time user location and service deployment location. There is no need for traffic to detour through the roaming area when a user attempts to access the 5G education private network from different campuses. All of these take campus user experience to a whole new level.
Dr. Chen Dan, 5G Industry Director of Government and Enterprise Dept from China Unicom, said: "As the 5G free-mobility private network grows, we can see a clear trend: people are increasingly expecting smooth switching between intranets and the Internet, not only on campuses, but also for public services, enterprise remote office, smart healthcare, and more services. Recognizing this, China Unicom and Huawei have launched a plan to extend the 5G mobile-free private network to 1000 schools and 10,000 enterprises in 100 cities in China, with the aim of promoting the integration of 5G with industries and accelerate their digital transformation."
Shen Chengying, President of Huawei Telco Cloud &5GCtoB Domain, also noted: "Mobile VPN is a breakthrough innovation for private networks. Huawei will continue to work with China Unicom and other industry partners to innovate, and apply more innovations to more industries, helping enterprises to go digital faster and achieve a virtuous business cycle."