2024 proved to be a transformative year for the communications industry. AI played a critical role, with China’s Tsinghua University unveiling the world’s first hands-free autonomous network.
Meanwhile, companies like Huawei leveraged AI for network efficiency, helping ISPs troubleshoot and optimize services. Digital industrialization gained momentum, revolutionizing sectors like railways, ports, and power grids. Huawei’s solutions helped power companies improve outage reporting and fault locating.
Meanwhile, the introduction of 5.5G offered ultra-low latency and guaranteed service quality for industries like autonomous driving and manufacturing. Wi-Fi 7 debuted, offering speeds five times faster than its predecessor and presenting service providers with new revenue streams.
The next digital transformation has arrived, and it’s just beginning.
Steve Saunders:
2024 turned out to be a pivotal year in the history of the communications industry. And FNTV had a front-row seat to all of it. As breakthrough after historic breakthrough took place across the globe, from Istanbul to Dubai and beyond. It was the year of AI, of course, and artificial intelligence was behind many of the most significant stories, including the arrival of the world's first hands-free autonomous network at Tsinghua University in Beijing, with China Mobile set to follow suit in 2025.
Wang Hui:
Actually, we used AI for the network almost more than 10 years. At the beginning, we just used the AI algorithms to find anomalies in the networks. And later, we used neural networks to predict the traffic of the network. And recently, we used a LAT (Latency-Aware Topology) model for their autonomous network.
York Yue:
Artificial intelligence right now is a hot topic in the industry. So, we try to help our customers adopt this artificial intelligence to make the network more efficient. For example, for ISPs, one of the biggest costs for their business is troubleshooting. Right now, we are cooperating with some ISPs. We try to do more things that put some detection in the network. Maybe, every day, we run automatic detection.
Steve Saunders:
This was also the year that digital industrialization really took off, delivering more efficient, profitable, sustainable ways to run everything from railways to ports, to the electrical grid.
Jason Li:
So currently we're providing digital intelligence solution and services to nearly 200 power companies around the world, not just in China. We have achieved our outage reporting within one minute. And also fault locating within three minutes, and also the light loss analysis within 15 minutes, which means a lot for the power company.
Steve Saunders:
These industrial applications rely on the capabilities of 5.5G and not just its speed.
Cullen Xu:
5.5G will have the capability for the low latency, the higher guaranteed experience. So for some automatic drivings, for manufacturers, they need a high quality networks, so the customers can customize for the service. They can charge more in the price. 5.5G can have new content, the new applications to the customers like AR, VR, for the new contents and for HD videos. So for these new applications and the guarantee experience, they can upgrade for the tariff package.
Steve Saunders:
The first Wi-Fi 7 products also debuted, and we were there. The latest standard is five times faster than Wi-Fi 6. Significantly, it also comes with features that allow service providers to enhance customer experience and create new revenue opportunities. So, what's next? Well, 6G is on its way and quantum computing. And when the first lunar networks come online in a couple of years time, the sky will no longer be the limit for communications. It's clear that the next great digital transformation is only just getting started and we are here for it.