Li Peng, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales & Service, delivered a keynote speech at the Global MBB Forum 2024. He shared his views regarding the state of intelligence within the ICT industry, and expanded on how entities can make the most of new opportunities in an era in which AI is changing every aspect of our lives and work.
According to Peng, in the Mobile AI era, intelligence will become a universal service. Everyone will be able to use it anytime, anywhere, and the mobile industry will play an important role in this process, just like it did following the introduction of voice calling and the mobile internet.
The State of the Current Mobile AI Era
In this new era, the industry will also see new changes in how information is created, shared, and used. These changes will pose new challenges for networks, however, will also present huge new opportunities. Notably, AI devices will enable new forms of interaction, giving rise to a better experience and greater productivity.
According to the IDC, by 2028, global AI smartphone shipments will reach more than 900 million units and there will be over 1,000 AI-native devices on the market. Users will interact with these devices in many new ways, including through voice, gestures, and even emotions. The experience will be smoother and the devices will understand the user better, thus, interactions will be much more efficient. For example, new generation AI glasses can lip read with over 95% accuracy in noisy environments.
In addition, AI agents will change how we work and live. They will facilitate the introduction of intelligent services everywhere and drive explosive growth in data. By 2030, most people will have a personal AI agent to help them at home, at work, and arrange their travel. These assistants will work nonstop, generating and processing over 10 times more data than AI assistants today.
In the ICT industry, AI robots will play a key role in R&D, production, QA, and logistics. Each robot will process more than 10 GB of data per hour. In total, by 2030, AI agents are predicted to process 120 times more data than today.
Moreover, the rapid increase in data generated by AI will lead to fundamental shifts in traffic models. In traditional traffic models, data flows in a single direction. Similar to the flow of video content from data centers to smartphones, current data transfer is general and moves in a linear path. AI will transform this flow, personalizing data and enabling it to move in multiple directions. For example, training large models requires super-fast transmission between data centers. At the same time, AI applications and AIGC need to transmit data between the edge, the cloud, and devices.
Furthermore, there will be a rise in east-west traffic as well as mesh connections between multiple types of devices and hosts. As the structure of traffic models changes, network optimization will be more critical than ever.
The Four Key Areas Catalyzing the Mobile AI Era
If the industry aspires to seize new opportunities in the Mobile AI era, it needs to reshape across four key areas: network services, infrastructure, O&M, and business models.
Network Services
In terms of network services, mobile products and services are the perfect access points for AI, so the industry needs to reshape them in order to better meet demand.
For individual consumers, carriers can take advantage of common touch points to provide intelligent services, such as for calls, messaging, and customer service. For example, Chinese carriers launched 5G New Calling, which is transforming the voice call experience. Users can use AI to create their own digital avatars for voice calls and access real-time translation. They can also utilize an AI assistant to book appointments.
Within the home, smart homes are becoming smarter through the implementation of AI agents. One carrier launched an AI box that supports applications such as interactive sports viewing and AI-driven fitness programs for TVs. As a result, TV usage doubled and ARPU grew by 28%.
Outside the home, carriers can also provide stable, high-speed connectivity for carmakers to enable intelligent cockpits and vehicle-cloud collaboration. This helps deliver a safer and more efficient travel experience.
For SMEs, carriers can provide affordable AI services and devices. Similarly, for industry customers, carriers can combine connectivity, networking, and AI capabilities to enable intelligent transformation.
Network Infrastructure
To support a wide range of experience requirements for AI services, the industry needs to reshape its network infrastructure.
To deliver the most natural interaction, an AI assistant requires less than 300 milliseconds of end-to-end latency, thus, air interface latency needs to be less than 20 milliseconds. To achieve this, carriers can build AI-centric networks that support deterministic access, elastic scheduling, and lossless WAN. This can help deliver on-demand, reliable connections between the cloud, the edge, and devices.
Operations and Maintenance (O&M)
As networks become more complex, operations and maintenance (O&M) becomes more challenging. This is an area where AI for networks can provide valuable support.
In terms of service operations, AI agents can support the real-time simulation of multi-modal data. This helps carriers to evaluate network resources more efficiently and provision new services more quickly.
In terms of network maintenance, AI agents can automate task planning and orchestration, solving problems caused by software. At the same time, copilots can help field engineers to quickly locate and fix any hardware problems.
Business Models
Finally, mobile AI presents a valuable opportunity to move beyond traffic-based revenue and start monetizing user experiences. To achieve this, the industry must also rethink and reshape its business models.
More than 30 carriers in Europe have launched speed-based mobile plans. Notably, consumers are willing to pay more for a guaranteed experience. Chinese carriers are also exploring multi-factor monetization. Through AI-based services like AI boxes for homes, New Calling, and cloud phones, carriers can offer new revenue streams based on computing power, storage, and VIP services.
For enterprise customers, carriers can draw insights from cloud service models by exposing their network capabilities through open APIs. This approach allows carriers to monetize these capabilities and expand into the B2B2C market.
Many leading carriers in China, the Middle East, Europe, and the Asia Pacific are already leading the way forward. They have verified AI service capabilities on live 5G-A networks, covering a wide range of scenarios within the individual, home, travel, and business sectors.
The Future of the Mobile AI Era
Moving forward, there are two things the industry can do to capitalize on new opportunities in the Mobile AI era.
Firstly, the industry needs to prepare the network to support AI, which involves enhancing network capabilities, particularly in terms of uplink, latency, and capacity.
Secondly, the industry must utilize AI to manage more complex networks to automate operations and maintenance (O&M), optimize network efficiency, and ensure a reliable user experience.
Peng emphasized that the opportunities are great, and the best time to act is now. Huawei is ready to work with carriers and industry partners to build networks for AI, and AI for networks. Together, the industry can unleash incredible new value.
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