On September 21st, at the "Refresh Your Life" Sina 5G Open Day co-sponsored by Sina Technology and Sina 5G, Cui Li, Vice President and Assistant President of ZTE, explained her observations and insights on the 5G industry.
In the past period of time, various industries have undergone digital industrialization changes, and the multiplier effect is very obvious. However, in the context of the intelligent connection of all things towards the ultimate digital transformation of the industry, which hills need to be crossed?
In addition to the deterministic challenge, in the entire process of pan-5G technology promoting industrial upgrading, the biggest uncertainty is the business model.
"In the future, whether it is operators, industrial partners, ecological partners, or the ultimate service industry or corporate customers, they will have to solve a problem, that is, where do they get value from? Value is the most fundamental factor that makes the entire ecology develop. ".
Based on the current point of view, in the process of promoting pan-5G technology, it is manifested as capability enhancement, capability cross-border, ecological integration, etc. However, which scenario will be the first to find a mature business model is currently the most hoped problem to be solved.
There are three key points to this:
First, the enhancement of 5G core capabilities involves key technological innovation and stimulating toB kinetic energy.
Second, edge deployment to ensure low latency and key data security.
Third, precise cloud network, tailored for enterprise digital services.
She said:
"I hope to build five capability platforms to lower the threshold of application innovation. In addition to core capabilities, I also hope to share practical experience and ultimately enable industry innovation."
Full speech
Hello, everyone, I am very glad to have the opportunity to share with you today, ZTE 's views on how value-driven and precise triggers the transformation and upgrading of the industry in the pan-5G era.
In the past year or so, since the first year of commercial use of 5G, ZTE has begun to collaborate with major operators and more than 300 industry partners to jointly carry out some exploration and practice of industrial transformation and upgrading.
We work with Sany Heavy Industry, including Zhejiang Xinfengming, Anshan Iron and Steel, and other industrial scenes. We hope to help them realize a cost reduction and efficiency improvement, and a transformation to flexible manufacturing in the future.
Then we and New Oriental, including Thailand's AIS, etc., we have carried out some remote provision of medical resources and educational resources, hope that everyone can obtain the resources they need in the largest range and the shortest time.
Similarly, we are also carrying out extensive environmental protection practices with Jiangxi and Austria, and we also hope that through the collaborative application of pan-5G technology, we can achieve real green mountains and green waters.
But in the process, we also discovered that while we are facing opportunities, there are still many challenges. These are also some of the topics I hope to mention today.
The new crown epidemic that is just underway. Although it has been well controlled in China, I must see that it is still spreading all over the world. Under such circumstances, it is actually on the contrary. It brings some opportunities to our entire future development of the digital economy. How do you say this?
Everything has a good side and a bad side. On the bad side, it does have a significant impact on our production, life, and social and economic development, but on the good side, it is precisely because of the new crown epidemic that we all have to adopt Some non-contact ways to carry out, such as remote education, remote medical treatment, including some game activities when we are isolated at home, including some remote coordination of work.
We will find that under any circumstances, it is possible for us to achieve some non-contact collaboration, production and life through the current means of communication and technology.
So under this situation, this is the first change that the epidemic has brought to us all. The second change is about companies. Companies previously faced more of a deterministic challenge, but the epidemic made everyone understand that some things may be black swans that we can’t see. When they come, how can companies be able to This is the most important thing to deal with quickly.
Therefore, digital transformation has almost been put on an issue that every company thinks about.
In addition, the epidemic has also strengthened the country's determination and strength to promote new infrastructure construction. These are some of the opportunities we have seen.
As just mentioned, we will face many challenges below. From the past time, we have experienced a stage where digital industrialization has made a huge contribution to the development of the entire digital economy.
We can see that from the fact that the compound growth rate of infrastructure in the past few years is only 3%, we have driven the Internet industry with a compound annual growth rate of more than 20%. It can be said that the multiplier effect of digital industrialization is very obvious.
In the future, what we hope is that the entire digital industrialization can further realize a digital transformation and upgrading of the industry under the leadership of 5G-led technology. Looking at this kind of vision, we will think of a question, we are moving towards the final digital transformation of the industry in the future of the intelligent connection of everything scenario, which hills do we need to cross? Let's take a look next.
The first one is the problem of ability. It should be said that in the past period of time, the development of the entire digital economy, various industries and enterprises, have made great progress in their own informatization and automation.
But if we hope that the entire digital transformation will penetrate the entire industry, especially the production domain, we will find that it brings more new requirements to the network and computing power.
Then these requirements are manifested in the fact that even in the same industry in different scenarios and different businesses, the requirements for network connectivity and computing power are different, which is the fragmentation of demand.
In addition, in any industry and enterprise, what is actually needed is more than 5G. Above 5G, he may still need computing power, and above computing power there is also a demand for artificial intelligence. Therefore, this kind of multi-technology collaboration is also some of the challenges we must face.
Including the heterogeneous network just mentioned. For example, our future computing will not only be in the cloud, but we must also provide more accessible computing power at the edge to reduce latency and provide security.
In addition, industries and companies generally have strong requirements for the reduction of Capex+Opex for TCO, that is, overall cost. Because of the digitalization of the industry, in essence, the first point is to reduce costs and increase efficiency. For high security, there is no doubt that the production domain of all industries has the highest security level.
A large number of industries and companies may hope that once my production domain undergoes a digital transformation, I will hope that my data will not leave the park to ensure my overall safety. The service you provide to me must have very high reliability and no problems, otherwise the entire production will be affected by a large area.
One last point, in fact, in various industries and enterprises, especially large enterprises, he hopes that I can enjoy some independent and controllable maintenance and services just like building a private network by myself. Therefore, these requirements, it should be said, are some deterministic challenges from the perspective of capabilities.
What we will see next is, in addition to the challenge of certainty, what uncertain problems we have.
It should be said that in the entire process of pan-5G technology to promote industrial upgrading, we found that the biggest uncertainty is actually the business model.
In the future, all customers, whether they are operators, industry partners, ecological partners, or the final service industry or enterprise customers, actually have to solve a problem, that is, where do I get value from?
Value is the most fundamental factor that makes the whole ecology develop.
Therefore, based on the current point of view, in the promotion of our pan-5G technology, although in various industries and various scenarios, we can see that some are capacity enhancements, some are cross-border capabilities, and some are ecological integration.
But which scenario and which application will be the first to find a mature business model, or in other words, which scenario and which application can be the first to benefit many parties and make many parties get value, this is what we hope to solve One of the biggest uncertainties.
At this point, our point of view is value creation and agile innovation, which may be the key to breaking the game. Why do you say that?
Because of value creation, in fact, as long as there is value, everyone can share value, so the business model can go through. One more thing, when everyone hasn't figured out how to do it, agile innovation and rapid iteration are the best way to achieve future goals, which is to cross the river by feeling the stones.
So at this point, these are some of our thinking about the most uncertain business model.
In combination with the requirements for the deterministic challenge of network capabilities and the uncertainty of the business model, we have put forward three key viewpoints, hoping to help solve these problems.
The first lies in the enhancement of 5G core capabilities. In fact, the industries just mentioned, including large enterprises, have some of the latest requirements for network capabilities, and we can achieve some key technological innovations to stimulate the strong momentum of the 2B industry.
To give a simple example, we will talk about the uplink bandwidth enhancement of our 5G. Why do we need to enhance the uplink bandwidth? The simplest example is that we now use machine vision inspection widely in industrial scenes and other scenes.
That kind of detection may be used for quality detection, or it may be used for time judgment, node judgment, temperature judgment, and so on.
But in any case, 8K high sentimental visual inspection actually requires hundreds of megabytes for the uplink bandwidth of the entire network. So on the current 5G network, there are still some difficulties, an uplink bandwidth of several tens of megabytes.
Therefore, we have proposed that, for example, mobile can be combined with the 4.9G frequency band to achieve up to hundreds of megabytes of uplink bandwidth through different uplink and downlink frame ratios. China Telecom and China Unicom can use FDD and TDD carrier aggregation to achieve uplink capacity and coverage enhancements to meet similar scenarios with special requirements for uplink bandwidth.
The second aspect is the enhancement of a deterministic network. Why talk about determinism?
We found that the biggest difference between many industrial scenes and the original 2C market and consumer market is that they will have very detailed QOS requirements, such as the power distribution protection of the power grid. His power distribution protection may affect your timing accuracy. The entire jitter and delay have very high requirements. Under this circumstance, we have to do a deterministic network enhancement on the original 5G network.
For example, in the bearer network, we can use some small-particle hard slices of FlexE to ensure low-latency services. For example, we can establish a 5G LAN local area network to achieve synchronized coordination and timing between different power grid differential protection units. .
One of the biggest problems may be the resources in the air. The development of 2, 3, 4, and 5 G has come all the way. The biggest problem we solve is to continuously improve the efficiency of the use of frequency resources in the air. The actual resources of the air interface before wireless The above are all doing their best. When there are a lot of users and a lot of business, everyone will feel that my speed has slowed down.
Why is my current network so slow? When it comes to the industrial scene, you will find that you are not only doing your best, but more importantly, being foolproof, so we will use slice enhancement on the wireless side, which is In the air interface segment, the protection of key industrial services is achieved by reserving radio resource PRB resources.
In addition to the enhancement of the entire network capability, in fact, the second very important thing is that in a large number of industry application scenarios, we will see low latency and data security considerations. In this case, the edge The deployment can solve this problem to a large extent.
For operators, or for cloud service providers, edge deployment should be another Capex investment. In this area, how can we truly cross the river by feeling the stones as just said? Start of magnitude, agile innovation, rapid iteration, this is a problem that needs to be solved.
So one of the concepts we put forward is to start light-weight in a variety of flexible ways in edge deployment, starting with the lowest configuration. For example, at the edge, it can be used on existing BBU or optical access equipment. Open part of the capabilities through the way of plug-in boards to provide edge computing power.
Going to the next level, we can directly deploy integrated cabinets according to different needs to provide three gigabit simultaneous access. For example, wired optical access, wireless 5G, Wifi6 and so on.
On the side of the resource pool, some general-purpose servers that have been specially optimized for different computing power and forwarding requirements can be configured, as well as some hardware acceleration methods, so that our deployment at the edge can really be lightweight. At the beginning, with the exploration and development of the business, various resources, including hardware resources, including the resources of the cloud platform, will continue to be superimposed, so as to achieve a good business model to the maximum extent.
The last one of our core points is to propose a precise cloud network to truly tailor the digital services of enterprises. Accuracy Cloud Network We just had a product launch conference on September 3rd, ZTE Corporation, you can go to know the specific details, but I will introduce some of the most core concepts here.
The reason why we talk about precision cloud network is because the essential requirement of the digital transformation of enterprises is actually the need for connection and computing power at the same time, which is the integration of multiple technologies, so we hope that when we customize services for enterprises, we can really Achieve tailor-made, several core concepts proposed.
The first is the distributed precision cloud to achieve cloud on-demand generation, and the deterministic precision network realizes the network moves with the cloud. Such an organic combination can be maintained through unified maintenance and one-click maintenance, including cloud edge, cloud network, and edge edge. There is also end-to-end end-to-end endogenous security to meet the globalization needs of enterprises.
The most important and core thing here is our distributed precision cloud and deterministic precision network. So what is called distributed precision cloud? In fact, this concept is a little bit similar to the edge deployment just now, that is to say, the cloud base we hope to build, in other words, can be called the middle station, which is a Lego-style middle station with a very small particle loosely coupled architecture component. Such a middle station can be flexible to start lightweight, and can be configured, tailored and superimposed on demand in various combinations.
Another very important point is the concept just mentioned. This cloud must be able to meet the needs of agile innovation, because I may not know what the needs will be or what the scenario will be. It means crossing the river by feeling the stones. I want to start light-weight, iterate quickly, and after a little innovation, once I think it is established, I can realize the whole network replication. These are some of the core concepts of distributed precision cloud.
What is the deterministic precision net? That is, we first hope to be able to deterministically distinguish, accurately distinguish users, user locations, and user services. After combining this distinction, we can carry out accurate resource allocation, whether it is dedicated line resources, wireless resources, bearers, etc. The resources of the network are accurately matched. After that, the most important thing is that I can provide accurate services. Just like the wireless part just mentioned, I have to go from doing my best to ensuring nothing is wrong.
What we have just talked about are some of the ideas and ideas we have put forward in response to the challenge of the deterministic ability of the global digitalization of enterprises and the challenge of the uncertainty of the business model. Combining these ideas and ideas, we have actually implemented them in our own enterprises.
The first is that we build the ultimate 5G intelligent manufacturing base in Binjiang, Nanjing. In fact, now in the Binjiang production base of ZTE in Nanjing, most of the 5G base stations have been manufactured in this production base.
And just under this scenario, we have applied a large number of applications such as 5G AGV trolleys, such as smart warehouses, including machine vision inspection, and other extensive robot applications. In this scenario, we hope that ZTE itself is a manufacturing company. In this scenario, it should be possible to explore the application practices in many industrial Internet and some future industrial scenarios.
Now we have a five-year plan. We hope that in the end we will not only be able to reduce costs and increase efficiency in this industrial manufacturing scenario, but more importantly, be able to achieve flexible production and manufacturing, and agile rapid response.
In addition, another important practice the company has done is to carry out its own digital transformation. Our vision is to hope that ZTE will become the ultimate cloud company in the future.
What is the ultimate cloud company? It is every employee, we jokingly call ZTE in a pocket, I just need to bring a mobile phone, basically I can carry out office collaboration in any place; my R&D staff as long as they have a cloud desktop, can be directly at home, anywhere Access for collaborative development; both my customers and my supply chain are digitally connected with me at the same time, so that all resources can be optimally adjusted and configured.
Fundamentally, I hope that our R&D efficiency has increased my R&D efficiency by 30% during the digital transformation process of R&D in the past, and the time to market has been shortened by 40%. Moreover, during the epidemic, we will fully resume work on February 3. It should be said that it is very difficult to achieve 95% of the R&D efficiency before. Everyone is working remotely, and remote collaborative R&D has achieved this level. It should be said that the benefits have been tasted. We will continue to deepen it in the follow-up and realize the company's annual operation 15% increase in rate.
Finally, let’s talk about ZTE’s role here. What we hope is to contribute core capabilities. Core capabilities include end-to-end solutions for the entire network. This is a pan-5G solution. In addition to 5G, there is also cloud computing. There are also operating systems, databases, and a large number of core new ICT technologies.
There is also the second part of our hope for the capability platform, because vision and industrial interconnection, artificial intelligence, and security are universal needs. We hope to build five capability platforms to lower the threshold of application innovation for ecological partners and industry partners.
In addition to our core capabilities, we hope to share our practical experience, just like what we just mentioned, whether it’s the practice with many partners in various scenarios or our own practice, we are willing to share it with everyone, hoping to do it eventually To empower industry innovation.
ZTE’s vision is that we hope to "make communication and trust everywhere". Thank you.
Edit | Chen Jinglan
Proofreading | Li Zi
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