Huawei's Ryan Ding: Intelligent Experiences Unlock New Value

On the second day of the 6th Ultra-Broadband Forum (UBBF) held online, Huawei’s Executive Director and President of the Carrier Business Group Ryan Ding gave his keynote speech “Intelligent Experiences Unlock New Value”.

Over the past five years, Huawei, along with its partners, has worked together to define the industrial value that gigaband and premium broadband have to offer and continued to find new value in areas like gigabit speeds, network experience, operation and maintenance (O&M) efficiency, and industry ecosystems. Together, they have worked to maximize the commercial and industrial value of fixed broadband.

Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, fixed broadband networks have unleashed huge social and economic value, especially in countries that have world-class broadband infrastructure. Fixed broadband has played an important role in getting work, production, education, and the economy back on track.

Ryan Ding speaks at UBBF 2020

Ding said carriers’ continual investment and innovation in fixed broadband offers uncapped potential and will become a powerful engine for global economic recovery. He added that carriers need to redouble their efforts in fixed broadband, shift the focus from connecting households to connecting enterprises, and provide the ultimate service experience to every person, home, and organization through ongoing innovation. According to Ding, the industry needs to drive the boom of the global digital economy while working to maximize the commercial value of fixed broadband. This is why Huawei has suggested that intelligent connectivity will be a key area for industry innovation, and will help carriers explore new business opportunities and enable the digital transformation of industries.

As online connectivity becomes increasingly important in our lives, our homes are becoming multi-purpose platforms. With intelligent connectivity, households will enjoy a diversified service experience, including high-speed broadband, full coverage, and guaranteed service level agreements (SLAs). This will make homes more than just living spaces. They will become places where end users have a brand-new “Home+” intelligent experience.

Huawei has proposed a formula for maximizing digital value from homes: Home digital value = Broadband speed + Home network + Diversified services, which is outlined below.

Informed network construction decisions for faster broadband: Governments need to include broadband network construction as part of their national strategies as well as to provide policy and financial support. Carriers need to take a holistic approach for the planning, construction, installation, O&M, and operation of network infrastructure. They need to focus on high-value users and build gigabit residential areas to promote the widespread upgrade of broadband services.

Connecting every user for full coverage: Providing a quality Wi-Fi experience to homes is a major challenge that carriers face. With Wi-Fi products as a service and Wi-Fi services available on a platform, a home’s Wi-Fi experience can be visualized, managed, and maintained, which improves the service experience of home users. Huawei is working with carriers to promote the fiber-to-the-room (FTTR) solution, which can support the innovation of more smart home applications.

Guaranteed experience levels for target services: To further improve the experience for homes, the ability to intelligently identify target services has become all the more important. As such, carriers can use AI to determine the type of home service and then provide the right service with guaranteed experience levels across multiple scenarios. In other words, carriers can work more closely with OTT players to monetize the application ecosystem. Then they will provide guaranteed experience levels for target services to monetize differentiated services. Carriers can also explore new business opportunities in verticals like smart home.

For enterprises, digitization is about connecting capital, workforce, assets, information, and regulations. Though connectivity is the lifeblood of digital enterprises, carriers still face huge challenges in providing enterprises with guaranteed connectivity. Intelligent connectivity systematically improves enterprise experience in three areas: coverage, architecture, and fusion, and will help enterprises go digital.

Huawei has also come up with a formula that can help create greater digital value from enterprises: Enterprise digital value = Coverage x Architecture x Fusion, which is outlined below.

Intelligent, seamless coverage with multiple technologies: Carriers need to develop a comprehensive service area plan and deploy optical private lines within 300 meters of enterprise users. In addition, carriers need to integrate multiple technologies such as 5G, OTN, IP, and PON into one optical network to intelligently meet enterprises’ various needs with differentiated private line products. They can also make full use of their existing network resources, such as full-fiber cities, to deploy one network that serves multiple purposes and one private line that handles multiple services.

Deterministic experiences with elastic, intelligent architecture: Carriers need an elastic and intelligent architecture that is congestion-free, always-on, scalable, and simplified. This type of architecture can help achieve committed SLAs, including guaranteed bandwidth, latency, reliability, and service provisioning times. The architecture is essential for providing deterministic experiences and for monetizing SLAs.

Cloud-network fusion for differentiated experiences: Huawei believes that network capabilities will become foundational someday. Network boundaries will disappear, and clouds and networks will fully merge. Carriers will be able to diversify their offerings as they provide a self-defined experience throughout the entire user journey from purchasing to usage. In addition to cloud and network bundled services, they will also provide one hop to the cloud as well as differentiated cloud and network services.

At the end of his speech, Ding stated that business developments and technological advancements do not happen independently. Intelligent connectivity involves three major innovations: intelligent network construction, intelligent cloud network, and synergy between computing and networks. Huawei will work more closely with its customers to create greater digital value for homes and enterprises using the two monetization formulas and deliver intelligent experiences through ubiquitous connectivity. Together, they will enable digital transformation of industries and tap into a digital economy worth trillions of dollars.