Interview with Vice chairman of Huawei Mr Kun: 5 G is the foundation of all things interconnected

Straight hit MWC2015

5G is indeed a fundamental revolution, communication technology can be truly widely used in the industrial field, the realization of all things interconnected.

5G's global business timetable is expected to be in 2020 years. For Huawei, the 2G, 3G era is a catch-up, 4G era to achieve a parallel, 5G is a "leader" ambition.

5G is not a simple network upgrade, but a comprehensive reconstruction. "March 3, vice chairman of Huawei, Mr Kun, the rotating CEO, said at the 5G Symposium on the 2015 World Mobile Communications Conference (MWC) that technological innovation, cross-border cooperation and the right technology commercialization strategy were the three key initiatives that the parties should take on the road to the 5G.

Mr Kun, in a subsequent interview with the 21st century economic reporter, explained that 5G is not just a speed boost, the next 5G if all deployed, the number of connections it provides will reach hundreds of billions of orders of magnitude, and the other time delay from 50 milliseconds into a millisecond.

"These two features, and the applications it brings, show us a lot of space for imagination." Mr Kun said, first is the interconnection of all things, and secondly, many industrial applications can begin to rely on communication technology, "what will be the concept?"

Mr Kun said that Huawei had been in the 5G for 6 years, "We should be very confident that we are in the position of leader".

5 G is a fundamental revolution

"21st century": the current 4G in domestic business should be said to be in the initial stage, you expect 5G will come to everyone around? What changes will be brought about?

Mr Kun: 5G Global Business time, we are more consensus in 2020 years. Some of the experimental networks are expected to start deploying in 2017 and 2018. The clarity of the standard should also be in 2017-2018 years.

From the evolution of several generations of wireless communication technology, 2G and its prior technology, basically solve the problem of communication between people and people; 3G Technology was the first to solve the problem of Voice, 2007 Apple released its smartphone, immediately triggered the demand for mobile internet. 3G connects people to the net, but it has many technical limitations. Now 4G can better implement this connection.

Then 5G compared to 4G, on the one hand, in the face of personal business will have a lot of new promotion, than said bandwidth will be very large, peak rate will reach 10 g, many based on video multimedia applications, and today is not the same. At the same time, 5G will solve a more important problem, is really to the object and the connection provides the very good technical guarantee.

Everyone now see that the internet of things is the next very important direction, all industries have the problem of industrial informatization. These will also provide two critical requirements for the network.

The first is to connect the number of requirements, now in the 4G era, a base station sector can provide a number of connections only thousands of, to 5G can reach 1 million. We estimate that after the wide deployment of 5G, the number of global connections can reach hundreds of billions of levels.

The second is delay. When there is an international long-distance call, China makes a phone call to the United States, where it may take a second to hear the sound, which is the delay. If you want to do industrial applications, such as power grid scheduling, the latter to do autopilot, the delay is very critical. We have done the calculation, if the remote control to allow 100 kilometers per hour of the car to stop, from the instructions to really stop, 4G technology, it takes 50 milliseconds, The car will move 1.4 meters, which means that the accident may occur, and the 5G delay from 4G 50 milliseconds to 1 milliseconds, then the car to move the distance to a 2.8 cm.

Therefore, 5G is indeed a fundamental revolution, communication technology can be truly widely used in the industrial field, the realization of all things interconnected.

With this capability, the service of the operator becomes a basic capability, an enabling person for various industries, and a significant expansion of the market space, as well as more revenue from the business.

Beyond the telecommunications level

"21st century": At present, the international concept of 5G is still in the stages of disagreement, what is Huawei's definition of 5G? What are the plans for research and development?

Mr Kun: The 5G standard is not fully defined at this time, but that does not mean that 5G is an unknown thing. In fact, when we talk about 5G, it is very important to talk about what changes it can bring to us. This is the beginning of the end, UV to look at the future development of technology. I think that's the right direction.

We don't say what it is first, but what value it can create for us, such as the interconnection of everything, industrial applications and interactive multimedia applications. These require high bandwidth, a large number of connections, and lower latency.

I think that 5G to today, in a very healthy state, we are not simply thinking about technology, but consider how to use this technology in the future, use the needs of the application to guide our definition of the standard. I think this will be a more effective way.

"21st century": Huawei in 5G active input, then in the 5G leading, can there be a leap, there is no possibility to lead 5G global standards?

Mr Kun: Specific research and development plans, I can not tell you very clearly, our future technology research and development, not only to see a year or two, not only 35 years, we will see further.

It should be said that Huawei has invested in 5G for six years. We are now moving very quickly, whether we are involved in the definition of standards, in the study of technology, and in the experimental projects on the market. By 5G, Huawei was confident that we were in the position of leader. This point in the industry, we are still more consensus.

Of course, the 5G standard requires a common process of defining standards through extensive cooperation and dialogue. And we want this dialogue and cooperation to go beyond the telecom industry. Telecommunications standards in the past largely dominated by the telecommunications industry, and 5G is to other industries, to fully meet the requirements of different industries need more cross-sectoral dialogue. Because you do not talk, do not know what other people want, and so you worked hard to make, you may find that you do not meet his requirements.

"21st century": cross-sectoral dialogue and cooperation, what new requirements for Huawei? Does it mean a change in Huawei's strategy?

Mr Kun: In fact, Huawei from 2G, 3G, 4G all the way over, we have always insisted that the strategy is open cooperation, when you take out valuable things, we will naturally go with you. We will also adhere to the past practice, and actively participate in the industry and cross-sectoral dialogue. Cross-sectoral requirements can positively influence future definitions of standards in 5G, and what technologies we are able to achieve based on these standards. This is crucial.

Frankly speaking, this kind of discussion is not active in the world at present. So this is what we think is the next step to speed up the work.

I don't think the dialogue problem can be solved by the push of Huawei, which depends first on the consensus of the whole society. We hope that the government and the industry organizations will be able to play some more active roles in initiating such dialogues and discussions.

ICT (the English abbreviation for ICT) is an enabling technology, not a proprietary technology, to become a basic competency.

No acquisitions for scale growth

21st Century: This Cross-border dialogue is also a process of integrating CT (communication) with it (information technology). What do you think of Huawei's future position in the competition with CT and it vendors?

Mr Kun: the future of ICT integration is a big trend, under this trend, will see a lot of interesting changes, some companies will gradually lag behind, some companies will reflect the increasingly strong competitiveness. The tide is bound to occur, but we do not know how the results will be reflected in each company, this I do not do evaluation.

We are very confident of ourselves, because we have a strong CT, whether it is a technology or customer base. So in it, we are growing fast and making very big investments. All of our solutions for the entire company are a framework based on ICT that can be integrated.

We are confident that Huawei will be a leading company no matter how ICT is merged in the future.

"21st century": in the process of ICT transformation, Huawei will try to make up some ability by means of capital?

Mr Kun: Huawei has never made acquisitions for financial purposes, if it is for the purpose of enriching technical ability to buy some technology, such work we have been doing, in the future will not stop.

But we do not want to simply increase the size of the income to do mergers and acquisitions.

"21st Century": Huawei founder Ren has been stressing that Huawei is only a limited company and said: "We are only likely to lead US companies in the tip of the eye, and it is impossible to achieve such transcendence if it expands to the size of a match-head or a small stick." That is, the needle-type survival. Is this also the logic of Huawei's insistence on dialogue and cooperation in the 5G?

Mr Kun: When facing various industry markets, we always insist that our position is an "integrated" concept. We think you have to be very well integrated and you have to be very open. Therefore, we believe that openness is a foundation for Huawei's future survival. The truth is: you want to go faster, you go alone, you want to go far, you go with everyone. We hope that through openness, Huawei will have a stronger future vitality.

On the other hand, we also know that Huawei does not have the ability to be an expert in all industries, so we can work with experts to eventually turn our capabilities into the basic capabilities of all industries. For example, now Europe has 4.0 industry, China is called the industrialization of information, in fact, everyone is going the same way, is to use ICT technology to upgrade and transform the traditional industry, so that it more intelligent, more efficient, can have a better experience. I think this process will give Huawei a lot of room.

"21st century": you just talked about 5G more is based on pipelines, then how do you see the future of smart phones and other consumer business in Huawei strategy position?

Mr Kun: Huawei's entire strategy, the terminal is actually a very important part.

I think the future terminal areas will have an unimaginable space for change, with the development of technology, terminals from the function to the shape will occur immeasurable changes. Today is the form of mobile phones, in fact, before the mobile phone is actually in the form of a computer. And, if we put the physical form of the terminal to the side, you take it out to see, you will find that the future changes are infinite, such as the operation of the function is in the terminal or in the future to occur inside the cloud, which can bring a lot of imagination space. When cloud computing becomes more and more developed, there may be a lot of computing going into the cloud, which doesn't necessarily happen in the terminal.

There is, its information rendering function, in the end depends on this screen to present or by glasses to present, or another thing to present, this is a great imagination of space.

Under this kind of change, what kind of relationship is the terminal and network in the future? What we now understand is that terminals are part of the information pipeline we see. The bottom line is that any change in the terminal area, I think, is possible.