PRESS RELEASE: Recently, China Telecom Guangdong and Huawei piloted 100 intelligence-native 5.5G base stations in the city of Shenzhen.

In this pilot, universal intelligent service processing units (UISPs) were used on the RAN side to enable intelligent communications and smart base stations, helping operators increase service revenue, provide better user experience, and reduce O&M costs. The pilot results have shown that intelligence-native 5.5G base stations can increase HD live streams by 14%, boost traffic by 3.22%, and reduce power consumption by 7.9%, achieving intelligent enhancement of network experience and energy efficiency.

The development of 5.5G networks has sparked a proliferation of new services. This is creating huge business opportunities in various industries, but places higher network quality requirements on mobile operators. This pilot in three areas in Shenzhen provides some insights into how operators can tackle these challenges.

In OCT, a semi-pedestrianized area that is a hub for Shenzhen’s bohemian crowd, the powerful UISPs help base stations identify service types such as short videos, live streaming, XR, and cloud gaming in milliseconds, with an accuracy of over 99%. The intelligence-native base stations support intelligent service awareness, millisecond-level air interface problem identification and handling, intra-site and inter-site service coordination, and intelligent balancing for background users. These technologies have helped increase HD live streams as a proportion of all live streams by 14%, and improved the average uplink single-user perceived rate by 36%, all without impacting background user experience.

In Shenzhen’s Guanlan Subdistrict, the intelligence-native base station solution employs real-time service prediction and a model that balances service experience and energy saving. Without any manual intervention, the average daily power consumption in this area can be reduced by 7.9%, equivalent to 6.3 kWh per base station, while the network indicators are being stable.

In Window of the World, a theme park in Nanshan District, the base stations can also identify service types through flows and service features. This helps proactively ensure and monitor experience and shorten the latency for short video services, while providing assurance for poor-quality cells. The solution has effectively stimulated traffic while improving user experience, and the average traffic in this area has seen a year-on-year increase of 3.22%.

For the next step, China Telecom Guangdong will work with Huawei to accelerate the large-scale deployment of the intelligence-native 5.5G base stations to further verify its experience, energy efficiency, and maintenance efficiency as the operator looks to improve 5G user experience and facilitate digital, intelligent transformation, bringing intelligent 5.5G services to users in Guangdong province.