PARTNER FEATURE: The dizzying speed of AI innovation is creating huge opportunities across the ICT industry, observed Yang Chaobin, Director of the Board and CEO of the ICT Business Group of Huawei, who argued more intelligent services will continue to stimulate new network demands.

“AI technologies are evolving faster than we ever imagined.”

At the recent launch of the vendor’s AI-Centric Network solution, Yang highlighted the vast upside of AI for consumers, businesses and society.

Breakthroughs in AI are allowing the technology to quickly integrate into everyone’s work and daily life, he said.

“For example, thanks to AI, running shoes with vision capabilities can improve our form and make workouts more effective. In homes, robots can do housework and care for the elderly.”

In China, drones are already being used at scale for delivery.

Network impact

As more 5G applications emerge, Yang noted the experience required by different types of users will continue to evolve. For example, delivery drivers, live streamers and gamers all have different uplink, downlink and latency requirements.

He suggested AI will continue to boost user requirements in three ways.

First, AI is driving traffic increases. For example, to support in-car AI assistants and entertainment, smart vehicle DOU has exceeded 200GB. This is ten-times the average DOU of individual users.

Second, AI is making the need for high uplink capacity more common. By the end of this year, 10 million people are expected to use AI glasses, with the interactive experiences of these devices demanding large uplink capacity.

“Individual users no longer need just traffic-based experiences. They demand more personalised services, which means networks will need diversified capabilities.”

For organisations, AI is transforming collaboration from person-to-person to agent-to-agent interactions, requiring an increase in the number of connections,  frequency of interactions and response speeds.

Bigger picture

“If we look at society as a whole, AI applications will be everywhere, which will accelerate intelligent transformation,” Yang said.

Analysts forecast 200 billion connections around the world by 2030.

AI services are certainly reshaping industries, and creating huge opportunities for ICT industry, he said.

Turning to its new AI-Centric Network solution, the executive noted the solution can improve network capabilities to “achieve all-domain connectivity”, giving operators intelligent tools to create new services and business models.

In addition to enhancing connectivity by using Huawei’s AI core and 5.5G gear to deliver high bandwidth and intelligent scheduling, the offering supports collaboration between AI and networks to improve allocation of resources such as routing, bandwidth.

Yang closed by saying the AI era is fast approaching and Huawei is ready to work with operators and partners around the world to enhance intelligence, make networks more efficient and deliver superior user experiences.

“Let’s work more closely together to enable a truly intelligent world for every person and organisation, and make AI inclusive.”