Huawei banks on mobile AI to enhance universal connectivity

Huawei's Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board David Wang making his presentation at the Shanghai MWC 2024 in China. [Courtesy]

Huawei Technologies is now banking on mobile Artificial Intelligence to maximize its connectivity.

The firm said it would utilize the MWC's 2024 edition in Shanghai China to showcase its latest products and solutions that support both commercial 5G-A deployment and AI devices required for the mobile AI era.

Under the banner of "Advancing the Intelligent World" and offering "Commercial 5G-A Experience Tours", Huawei said it has so far successfully reached six separate consensuses with pioneering 5G-A operators from around the world, and launched a joint initiative for high-quality mobile video development in the AI era alongside global operators, industry customers, and other relevant organizations.

Over the next three days, Huawei is expected to meet with global operators and other industry players to discuss the development paths for F5G-A and Net5.5G.

Already leading operators in the Middle East and China have started to deploy 5G-A networks, with some of them already launching differentiated experience-based 5G-A packages.

During today's event, Huawei's Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board David Wang said the month marks the fifth year since 5G's commercial launch.

Wang said over the past five years, commercial 5G has achieved remarkable success and made an unprecedented impact on the global mobile industry.

"2024 marks the beginning of the mobile AI era thanks to the commercial launch of 5G-A and other AI devices. These technologies will be the key to making intelligent services universal," he said.

Wang said the mobile AI era will transform not only human-machine interaction, but also content production and mobile devices, and will revitalise society and create opportunities for the mobile industry.

"At Huawei, we will continue to accelerate 5G-A development from both the 'Networks for AI' and the 'AI for Networks' perspectives to create new business value. Huawei looks forward to working with all industry stakeholders to seize the enormous opportunities presented by the mobile AI era to shape the intelligent world," said Mr Wang.

According to him, the number of global 5G users has exceeded 1.8 billion, and many operators have already seen the first wave of benefits from 5G.

Consumer services like New Calling, cloud phones, and glasses-free 3D he said, have many higher network requirements such as higher speed and lower latency.

He said in terms of industrial services, the RedCap ecosystem has matured and passive IoT is now available to an even broader market with Internet of Vehicles (IoV) applications requiring higher uplink speeds.

"Soon, we will see a second wave of commercial benefits as we see 100 billion connections driven by services in all scenarios and industry upgrades driven by new business models," he said.

Leading operators around the world are already looking to capitalise on 5G-A with more than 30 operators having already completed 5G-A technical verification.

There are nearly 20 mobile phone models on the market that can currently support multi-carrier aggregation, with a number of them supporting activating the feature by default.

Around 10 operators have also already announced commercial 5G-A plans, which include the launch of 5G-A packages and other related services.

Multiple operators in the Middle East and China have started to deploy 5G-A three-carrier component (3CC) aggregation networks at scale targeting 5 Gbit/s downlink rates, and many operators are introducing a new experience-based monetisation model as they transition to 5G-A.