[Barcelona, Spain, March 1, 2023] The '5.5G Is Coming Summit' was successfully held during MWC23. At the summit, Huawei called on all industry partners to jointly promote an industry consensus and accelerate the commercial deployment of 5.5G, so as to move faster towards an intelligent world. Leo Ma, President of Huawei Cloud Core Network Marketing Dept, delivered a keynote speech entitled Leverage Connectivity Value, Enable Full Service, elaborating on the concepts and key technologies of 5.5G Core.
Leo Ma, President of Huawei Cloud Core Network Marketing Dept, delivering his keynote speech
As Leo noted, 5G development is in full swing, with business value gradually being created. In order to meet increasing service requirements and unlock better business value, 3GPP stepped forward and designated 5G-Advanced as 5G's second phase, and launched a project for its research and standardization. In R18, 3GPP will standardize the framework and features of 5G-Advanced, with the aim to enhance network connectivity and empower more industries. To keep up with 3GPP, Huawei put forward the concept of 5.5G Core, an industry first. Under this concept, Huawei will stay committed to enabling all services, expanding service scenarios, generating new business models, and driving all industries in their pursuit towards becoming truly digital and intelligent.
Upgraded Network Infrastructure
Over the past decade, the telco industry has observed the rapid development of cloudification. During this process, VM-based deployments helped industry players gain tremendous business success, and telco cloud has become one of the most important infrastructures for mobile communications. As cloudification continues to deepen, container-based deployments are trending. However, containers are still inadequate in terms of carrier-grade capabilities, and therefore are unable to meet the requirements of high performance, rock-solid reliability, easy O&M, and smooth evolution for 5.5G telecom services.
To tackle this, Huawei put forward the Dual-Engine Container solution. Leveraging cutting-edge technologies, such as programmable high-performance framework and dynamic huge page memory allocation, the solution effectively improves container performance and ideally fits into telecom services. In addition, the solution inherits the reliability mechanisms used with VMs, and introduces technologies such as storage fault bypass, cross-layer fault demarcation, and multi-OS to ensure a carrier-class reliability of 99.999%.
Compliant with the ETSI standard framework, the Dual-Engine Container solution enables VMs and containers to be simultaneously managed, with resources effectively shared. This contributes to higher integration and a faster service rollout. One architecture supports all paths on the evolutionary journey towards all-container networks. It can help navigate through the uncertainties that may influence the pace of evolution, and ultimately achieve convergence of resources, management, and deployments of telco cloud. All of these will help build a solid infrastructure base for 5.5G Core.
New Services for New Business
The 5.5G Core will shift its focus from connectivity enhancement to capability enhancement and then to service enablement. Alongside this process, numerous service scenarios and new experiences will be born. It is safe to say that 5.5G Core will be an incubator for service innovation.
To enhance connectivity, distributed MEC is introduced and flexibly deployed, fast-tracking the development of 5G private networks. However, this is just the beginning of what MEC will mean for us, as more advanced technologies, such as fully meshed MEC and enhanced 5G LAN will be defined in 3GPP R18 and later on. Against this backdrop, Huawei developed the Mobile VPN solution, which features easy connections, superior experiences, high reliability, and easy O&M. The solution can be applied on both 4G and 5G networks, helping enterprise users smoothly switch between public and private networks anytime, anywhere. As such, it has become the best choice for enterprise private networks.
In terms of service enablement, Huawei launched an innovative calling solution — New Calling.At the core of the New Calling solution lies the Data Channel, which is laid above the basic IMS voice network. Based on a new calling platform, the solution enables operators to provide ultra-HD, intelligent, and interactive calling capabilities, and helps them develop new calling services, including visualized voice calling, fun calling, and real-time translation. Operators can deploy new calling services step by step based on the maturity of the industry. Currently, some Chinese operators are recruiting friendly users for New Calling. Together, let's embrace a new era for calling.
Another remarkable new service from Huawei is New Video.Video services are the basis for the metaverse. With network and communication capabilities combined together in the 5.5G era, conventional videos will be transformed into spatial and immersive videos, and integrated with various terminals, such as smartphones, STBs, XR headsets, and TVs. This will upgrade video experiences from single-screen and individual-oriented to multi-screen and socially-interactive. It's also safe to say that New Video has ushered in a new era of immersive video services.
5.5G is a key milestone for the evolution of mobile networks. To fulfill the vision for 5.5G Core, Huawei will join hands with industry partners, to continuously enhance network connectivity, enable full-service scenarios, and monetize telecom networks. Together, let's make greater strides towards an intelligent world.