Huawei Vice Chairman Hu Houkun delivered a keynote speech at the opening ceremony of the Mobile World Congress 2021 in Shanghai on the theme of "Innovation, Lighting the Future". In the face of the significant impact the epidemic has had on countries, regions, businesses and individuals, technological innovation has helped society as a whole better cope with the impact of the epidemic. According to Hu Houkun, "Innovation activities should not only solve the problems and challenges encountered at the moment, but more importantly, look to the future and think about how to make our lives richer, business smarter and society more inclusive through innovation in the post epidemic era." He also pointed out that "differences in mastery of digital technology resources and capabilities have exacerbated the polarization of society, which is particularly evident in the context of the epidemic. Technological innovation should strive to bridge new digital divides and promote socially inclusive development."
The following is the full text of the speech
Epidemics have become the new normal, from reactive response to proactive adaptation
The sudden epidemic of 2020 has had an unprecedented impact on society. According to the World Health Organization, last year more than 100 countries took measures to seal off their countries and cities. This social isolation, unprecedented in human history, has had a huge impact on the operation of economic activities and personal life. According to a research report by McKinsey, almost half of the small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Europe may face the risk of closure in 2021. The impact on individuals, I think we all have experienced, in the just past Spring Festival of the Year of the Ox, the number of Chinese travelers returning to their hometowns dropped by 50% compared to last year.
Under the epidemic, the whole society has demonstrated great resilience, taking various measures to fight the epidemic and actively adapting to the changes. In the process, there have been several significant changes in the way our society operates.
The first is the acceleration of intelligence. Now we are seeing more and more public **** places to see intelligent temperature testing instruments, with such instruments, the speed of temperature measurement can reach 10 people per second. By relying on such intelligent instruments, we can build the first public **** health line of defense in airports, stations and other places where the flow of people is concentrated.
The second feature is production automation. In the wake of the New Crown epidemic, more and more companies are looking to improve the non-contact nature of their operations. More automation technologies are being used, including automated production in factories, unmanned vehicle logistics services in parks, and robots for sterilization.
The third change is that online has become the norm. We've moved work and meetings online, and student education online. According to the Boston Consulting Group, in 2020, more than 100 million primary and secondary school students globally received an online education, which was unimaginable in the past.
Innovating for a more robust digital infrastructure
The changes described above are, on the one hand, a response to what people had to do in the face of the epidemic; on the other hand, it is precisely due to the development of digital technologies, such as 5G, the cloud, and IoT, in recent years, that we have been equipped and able to change the way society operates in the face of the epidemic. At the same time, these changes have placed new demands on digital technology facilities.
First, the demand for home broadband networks has increased dramatically. According to our statistics, global demand for wireless home broadband in 2020 has increased by 20% to 35 million units, allowing more households to enjoy better broadband networks.
Second, the epidemic also led to an average 50% increase in global network traffic, and in Wuhan, traffic growth even reached 70%. The traffic model has also changed: there is no longer a distinction between idle and busy times, and traffic hotspots have moved from outdoors to indoors and from urban to rural areas.
In addition, we observe that more organizations will be using cloud services in 2020. As many as 85% of organizations in certain industries in China, such as online education, healthcare, and retail, are using cloud services.
These new changes require a more robust digital infrastructure to meet them, and to do so, technology innovation is essential. Over the past year, we have worked with our customers to secure the robust operation of more than 300 networks in more than 170 countries around the world with innovative technologies and services. To give two examples, in Ningxia, we used an innovative integrated router to realize one device accessing multiple cloud services, meeting the demand of enterprises to go to the cloud at lower cost and faster speed during the epidemic. In terms of service innovation, in Indonesia, based on the new digital delivery technology, we completed the rapid deployment of more than 50,000 base stations under the epidemic.
Innovation is not just about the present, it is also about the future
From the experience of the past year or so, technological innovation has helped society as a whole to better cope with the impact of the epidemic. Looking ahead, the epidemic may persist for a long time, but the post-epidemic era has arrived, and the whole society is thinking about how to recover the economy and reboot the society. Innovation remains a key driver in this process.
Standing at a new starting point, we believe that innovation should not only focus on the present, but also actively think about how to look to the future, and through technological innovation, make our lives richer, our businesses smarter, and our society more inclusive.
Innovation for a richer life
Now, I invite you to experience a brand new application. We call it Huawei River Map. This app was developed by the Huawei team by combining 5G networks, 5G terminals and AR technology. We hope to use this app to make the virtual world and the real world better integrated together.
I asked my colleague to demonstrate this for you. In his cell phone screen, we traveled back to the Cretaceous period and saw ancient dinosaurs, and we went to the African savannah and interacted with giraffes and elephants.
There are several key technologies behind such an application, the first is high-precision centimeter-level positioning, which is 50 times more accurate than GPS positioning; the second is powerful arithmetic. To form a high-precision 3D map, you need to collect and calculate hundreds of millions of map feature points, and you must have strong arithmetic support in order to realize it; there is also the demand for network bandwidth to reach 100Mbps downstream, only the 5G network can provide such a large bandwidth, and the use of 5G cell phones to get a better application experience.
We believe that better integration of the virtual and real worlds is an important goal for the next step in innovation. We can also imagine that when we apply this technology to more scenarios, such as education, entertainment, tourism, and even transportation navigation, for consumers, they will get an unprecedented experience; for all kinds of enterprises, this kind of application will establish a new Internet portal for us, which contains endless business opportunities.
Next, let's look at what kind of changes innovation can bring to our manufacturing industry.
On this 130-meter-long Huawei cell phone production line, there are very few people on site, and the automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) are supplying and transporting goods back and forth on the prescribed lines. This workshop has deployed a dedicated 5G campus network, and about 500 devices in the workshop have been connected to the 5G network. Through the 5G network, real-time data interaction is realized between these devices. With such an intelligent production line, the number of operating workers has been reduced by more than 80% compared to the past. The overall production efficiency has increased by more than 3 times.
Let's look at how 5G and AI can help improve product quality. A circuit board the size of a palm, with as many as 2,500 devices on it, used to take at least 2 to 3 minutes for workers to detect with their naked eyes. Now it is high-definition photography, through the 5G uplink bandwidth quickly transmitted to the cloud, with artificial intelligence detection, just 6 seconds to complete the detection, the product yield also increased from 98% to 99.55%.
At Huawei, we are making full use of innovative 5G technologies through our own practices, such as the 800Mbps uplink bandwidth capability that we are currently realizing, which will reach 6Gbps in the future, and AI training platforms on the Huawei Cloud, which make the entire production line smarter, more flexible, and more efficient, as well as greatly improving the labor environment for workers.
Huawei is not only applying these innovations in our own factories to digitally transform them, but we are also working with our eco-partners to bring the fruits of these technological innovations to thousands of industries.
We believe that driven by these new technologies, all of society is facing a new opportunity for digital transformation, and this outbreak has accelerated this process. It is predicted that by 2025, 97% of the world's large enterprises will deploy AI, 55% of China's GDP will be driven by the digital economy, and 60% of operators' revenue will come from the industry.
Huawei is also actively preparing for the digital transformation of thousands of industries, with innovation and collaboration as the two grips. Our innovation encompasses three levels: technology, products and applications. Taking 5GtoB as an example, at the technology level, Huawei and operators and partners have validated the 5G Super Uplink innovative solution at scale. At the product level, we all know that edge computing is one of the key points for 5G toB industry applications. Huawei has launched an integrated 5G edge computing product that converges computing and communications, increasing the deployment efficiency of edge computing by 10 times. 5G is especially important for the promotion of applications in the industry. For industry scenarios, Huawei brings together partners from various industries through the Wireless Application Scenario Labs (X Labs) to actively explore the incubation of 5G applications for manufacturing, healthcare, finance, transportation, and other industries.
Another key to Huawei's innovation is collaboration. Taking 5GtoB as an example, we are actively cooperating with various partners on the one hand, so that Huawei's 5G products can better meet the needs of different industry scenarios, such as the 5G explosion-proof base station that can meet the needs of the coal industry's underground operations. On the other hand, we are actively cooperating with operators to promote 5GtoB solutions to various industries through joint innovation and strategic cooperation,**** together to promote the scale replication of 5GtoB from 1 to N, and accelerate the digital transformation of industries.
Huawei is also working with multiple industries to accelerate the convergence of 5G standards and industry standards, and to drive 5GtoB to scale through standardization. Just recently, Huawei, customers, and partners jointly established a smart mine lab in Shanxi. We hope to accelerate the scale application of 5G in the industry through such a cooperation model.
I would like to borrow the JP Morgan K-curve to explain my concerns. At the top of the K-curve, countries, companies and individuals that have mastered the resources and capabilities of digital technology are enjoying the dividends of digital technology. For example, companies that have mastered advanced digital technologies are experiencing record operating results and market capitalization, even in the midst of an epidemic. But below the K-curve, a large number of companies that have not mastered digital technologies are on the verge of collapse. Last year 100 million primary and secondary school students around the world learned online, but for families without connectivity, a child's suspension from school means a suspension from school.
For connectivity in remote areas, we introduced RuralStar, an innovative base station solution, and during the outbreak, Huawei partnered with Ghana on an agri-network infrastructure project, which will see more than 2,000 RuralStar base stations deployed in Ghana. Ghana is currently home to 29.6 million people, and with only 83% of the population covered by mobile networks, there is then a further 17% of remote areas with unresolved population coverage issues.
In this project, we are using the RuralStar solution to provide basic 2G and 3G connectivity, and a small amount of 4G broadband access. Specific innovations include: first, it is easy to install and deploy, and can even be hung on stakes; second, it uses solar power, making it easy to access power in remote areas where utility power is not available; and it adopts a low-power design to reduce the operating costs of the entire base station. Such innovation reduces the payback period (ROI) of the entire base station from 8-10 years to 2-3 years, giving operators more incentive to deploy on a large scale in remote areas. With programs like this, people in remote areas of Ghana can enjoy mobile services sooner.
Ghana is just a microcosm; globally, there are still more than 40% of people who have never had access to the Internet. This is a segment of the population that we must not forget as we move forward with digitization. Huawei's goal is to make digital technology more accessible to everyone, so that no one is left behind in the digital world.
We can also take action to enable micro and small businesses to benefit from digital technology.Hexa Food is a Malaysian company with only 75 employees that produces high-quality seasonings. Chili peppers are an important ingredient in the seasonings made by this small company. In the past, chili peppers were sorted by hand, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the quality varied.
Two years ago, Huawei helped the company introduce an AI-based chili pepper sorting solution. As a microenterprise, they didn't need to buy expensive hardware servers or high-level IT staff, and only needed to configure simple cameras and connectivity devices. Based on Huawei's cloud services, the enterprise realized intelligent sorting of chili peppers, dramatically improving the efficiency and quality of spice production. Last year, during the epidemic, it was difficult for them to recruit new staff, and it was with the help of AI that they doubled production with no increase in staff at all. I believe that looking to the future, countless micro and small businesses across the globe will need to be helped by technology like this.
Digital technology can also enable many scarce resources to be used more efficiently. The imbalance of healthcare resources is very prominent globally, and this problem was particularly exposed during the epidemic. In China, for example, there are about 200,000 experienced ultrasound doctors, and they are mainly in big cities and big hospitals. But with a population of 1.4 billion, patients are distributed everywhere. In remote areas, there is a lack of experienced doctors, even when medical equipment such as ultrasound is available.
After the 5G network is deployed, 5G-enabled remote ultrasound will allow experienced doctors in cities to guide local doctors in operating ultrasound equipment by using high-definition ultrasound images transmitted in real time through the 5G network, providing timely checkups and diagnostic services to local patients. This is a huge change in the ultrasound medical service model. In the past, under the traditional model, doctors, patients and equipment needed to be in one location to complete the medical work, thanks to the 5G network, can now be separated in different locations thousands of miles away from each other to carry out. Such a model greatly alleviates the imbalance and shortage of healthcare resources.
Digital technologies like 5G are acting as catalysts for remote audiology and remote CT, which are being adopted by more and more hospitals, and 5G-enabled healthcare is enabling more people in remote areas to have equal access to high-quality healthcare.
Epidemic "closes the door" and innovation "opens the window"
The global quarantine caused by the epidemic continues, and while we have to face the epidemic, we have to While the epidemic has forced us to "close the door", it has also opened a "window of innovation and cooperation". As we enter the post-epidemic era, Huawei hopes to continue to innovate, open up and collaborate with customers and partners, and promote the digital transformation of thousands of industries, so that life will be better, business will be smarter, and society will be more inclusive.