China Media Group’s Spring Festival Celebration event in 2020 was the first live broadcast using the 5G commercial network abroad. The China Media Group shooting team uses the 5G commercial network services of the two major carriers in the UAE carried by Huawei’s 5G equipment to transmit the live broadcast signals from Dubai to Beijing in real time to celebrate the Spring Festival.

Huawei 5G Base Station，5G CPEs and 5G Mi-Fi were adopted in the commercial network. The 5G network uploads an average of 80 Mbit/s HD video stream, enabling the Dubai residents to live broadcast their New Year greetings in HD mode. Chinese audiences can receive the greetings in real time. As a global pioneer in 5G commercial deployment, the UAE has built a large-scale 5G commercial network in 2019 to provide 5G services for the public. In addition, the continuously cooperation with vertical industries are conducted to build Dubai as a 5G city.

The 5G network features include wide coverage, large bandwidth, and low latency. It can enable collaborative live broadcasting, signal backhaul, and remote command and dispatch across multiple locations. HD video streams can be transmitted to the studio in real time by 5G instead of deploying optical fibers, microwave transmission systems, or satellite broadcast vehicle. The 5G network simplifies the transmission of HD video signals. The mobile phone-sized 5G Mi-Fi that weighs only 180 grams can be used to complete the live broadcast tasks. The 5G live broadcast solution has been used in the media industry for multiple times, making live broadcast more convenient, flexible and cost-effective.

As the media and video industry evolves towards HD, multi-angle, and highly interactive experience, the media industry will have increasing requirements for mobile high-bandwidth transmission networks. The media industry will become an important vertical industry that enjoys 5G. With the large-scale commercial use of 5G commercial networks and related terminals, 5G will gradually enable vertical industries to shift from demonstration projects to large-scale commercialization and promote digital transformation of industries.

Cogent and Huawei jointly concluded phase one tests of the industry’s first 4K broadcast encoders integrated with 5G modules at Huawei’s Shanghai Wireless X Labs (X Labs). The successfully piloted end-to-end (E2E) broadcast service marks an important step toward the commercial adoption of 5G media industry applications.

The encoder is the world’s first industrial pre-commercial product that supports both 5G non-standalone and standalone (NSA/SA) technologies and this is the first time integration tests have been carried out for media applications in conjunction with Huawei’s MH5000 modules. In the future, 5G 4K broadcast backpacks will become more compact and lightweight, featuring only encoders and batteries and with no need for customer-premises equipment (CPE) and mobile phones, while also offering stronger capabilities and improved battery life.

5G 4K broadcast backpacks were first introduced to the media industry in 2019, delivering 4K video broadcasts by tapping into such powerful 5G capabilities as wide coverage, high bandwidth, and low latency. Utilizing these features, 5G networks offer an ideal alternative to optical fiber links, microwave links, and outside broadcasting (OB) van systems required for 4K video transfer to studios in real time, while also enabling reliable real-time multi-camera, cross-region coordination and remote dispatching. As a result, traditional video transmission systems have now been resized to fit small backpacks and video collection and editing tasks can be completed on site, transforming conventional broadcast techniques.

The 4K broadcast encoder has two integrated MH5000 modules developed by Huawei, providing transmission support in dynamic traffic sharing mode for 40 Mbps 4K videos. This product supports both 5G NSA and SA networks in video transfer to cloud-based servers, where videos are then distributed to post processing devices. At the same time, the cloud-based servers support service level agreement (SLA) monitoring, which allows key performance indicators (KPIs) to be dynamically collected for networks and services in order to better determine if the link quality meets video upload requirements.

“5G commercial industry applications are integrated with 5G modules and native SLA monitoring functionality and require tailored optimizations for wide-area wireless service mechanisms,” said Zhao Qiyong, Director of Wireless X Labs. “5G 4K backpacks integrated with 5G modules are a typical example of the efforts being made in this area. 5G networks and associated terminals are already seeing large-scale commercial adoption and Huawei will continue to work with industry partners to enable vertical industries with 5G technology and evolve these showcases to real-world commercial applications.”

Huawei Announces Latest Cooperation Efforts at SCEWC 2019

The ninth Smart City Expo World Congress (SCEWC) is held in Barcelona from November 19 to 21, 2019. Huawei, together with more than 20 industry partners and customers, jointly attended the event under the theme of “Building a Fully Connected, Intelligent City.” Based on the Horizon Digital Platform and Intelligent Operation Center (IOC) for cities, Huawei showcased a wide-range of urban applications, such as intelligent education, intelligent healthcare, intelligent government, as well as the latest strategic cooperation with Barcelona. Meanwhile, at the EU-China City Forum, Huawei demonstrated its strategy in intelligent city construction and substantial practices in cities worldwide. Additionally, Huawei released the Smart City Development and Governance Standpoints Paper during the expo to encourage governments to adopt a systematic approach to digitalization and be economical in developing smart cities, while sharing Huawei’s point-of-view on smart city governance.

Building a Future Intelligent City in a “More Intelligent Way”

The EU-China City Forum was held on November 19. Shan Zhiguang, Director of the Informatization and Industry Research Department at the State Information Center, Rudolf Niessler, Principal Advisor for International Relations at the European Commission, and Sun Fuyou, Vice President of Huawei Enterprise Business Group shared their views. How to integrate various new technologies, connect information silos, efficiently govern data, and promote organizational and process transformation are common concerns between China and Europe, which are also challenges Huawei is dedicated to helping customers address.

“Smart city development needs to consider both technical and human factors, and needs to be done more intelligently,” said Mr. Sun. “It is a government-led initiative that requires a long-term, continuous process of development. Innovation, trial, and constant iteration will be key. An integrated digital platform can help powerful ecosystem partners conduct agile development and iterative operation based on the individual needs of the city.”

Based on the Horizon Digital Platform, Huawei launched the “HiCity” Intelligent City Solution, which optimizes the integration of a variety of new ICT technologies and data to streamline service processes, share service data, and transfer information flows, reducing the threshold for the use of new technologies and makes integration easier. Together with ecosystem partners, Huawei aims to better support the governance and innovation of smart cities.

Economic Vitality and Systematic Planning Are the Keys to Intelligent City Development

During the expo, Huawei officially released the Smart City Development and Governance Standpoints Paper. Through urban case analysis, the paper comprehensively details two typical models and six paths of how intelligent cities empower urban development. It is proposed that “economic” and “systematic” will be the keys to urban development.

The paper offered four initiatives on intelligent city construction. First, adaptation to new trends and shifting of the role of governments can accelerate intelligent city deployment. Second, adopting an economy-driven model can boost economic vitality. Third, systematic planning is needed to build a comprehensive and layered intelligent city capability system. Fourth, multi-faceted efforts help secure the sustainable development of intelligent cities.

During the expo, Smart City Industrial Ecosphere (SCIE), with Huawei as a member, reached strategic cooperation with the SCEWC to develop all-round cooperation in new technologies, industry incubation, industry standards, and industry ecosystems. Huawei hopes to contribute to the intelligent city standards, help cities build and enhance global competitiveness in the process of digitalization and intelligent transformation to jointly realize the vision and dream of a great city.

At the SCEWC, Huawei showcased its latest intelligent city solutions:

• IOC: A visualized, efficient, and intelligent city “brain” that enables visual management of city assets.
• Horizon Digital Platform for cities: This helps customers achieve the overall planning of urban infrastructure, enhance the business experience, and accelerate the launch of services. It also provides partners with integrated ICT infrastructure capabilities, accumulates industry assets, and unifies open interfaces to enable more efficient development and innovation.
• Intelligent applications: Including intelligent pole, intelligent road analysis, and intelligent indoor navigation solutions, which integrates with Huawei AR, Wi-Fi, and IPC products.
• Intelligent education: The Campus OptiX solution ensures superior service experience of classrooms in high-density scenarios. The Wi-Fi 6 solution offers high-bandwidth and low-latency classroom scenarios and the electronic whiteboards that enable remote teaching.
• Digital hospital: Huawei Wi-Fi 6 medical third-party asset management solution based on Wi-Fi 6, intelligent pharmacy based on Huawei edge computing, as well as Hospital Information System (HIS) and Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS) solutions using Huawei’s dual-active high-reliability all-flash storage.
• Intelligent customs: e-Government cloud, desktop cloud, national broadband, and government private network solutions.