“By 2020, our goal is to support 6.7 billion mobile broadband (MBB) users, 1Gbps access rate and 1 billion Narrow Band Internet of Things (NB-IOT) connections,” Huawei’s vice chairman and rotating CEO Hu Houkun said on 3rd November.
In the 2015 (6th) Global MBB Forum (MBBF 2015) that sponsored by Huawei and co-organized by the GSMA, he released the “MBB 2020” vision strategy, which shared Huawei's views on the future development and opportunities of mobile broadband and drew a clear blueprint for the next five years.
Eliminate new digital gap
Huawei recently launched a survey on the global connection situation, which found that despite current mobile communication penetration rate has reached 97% and mobile broadband coverage has reached 47%, there’re still about 1 billion people without voice connection and over 4 billion people without Internet connection in the world. Most of these people live in the developing countries, compared with people in the developed countries, they are unable to get higher quality education and the opportunities are more less -- the new digital gap is thus generated and is widening the economic gap around the world.
"The links among people have become our most important task. We need to eliminate the new digital divide and enhance user experiences," Hu Houkun said, mobile communication technology is very critical in this process, we need to pay attention on whether these technologies are available and affordable. It needs constant technology innovations in the infrastructure and devices to push the popularity of these technologies in the less developed regions.
In addition, Huawei appealed the regulators to distribute more spectrum resources to mobile communication industry and provide subsidies for the network deployment in the less developed regions, so as to promote applications of mobile communication technology and ensure the balanced and inclusive growth in the world.
"For the links among people, when focusing on the ‘quantity’, we should also put more attention on the ‘quality’. We need to pay attention to the user experiences." Hu Houkun said, the consumers’ demands have always been very high, they want HD voice, HD video, zero-latency and other services, they also always want to enjoy better and more convenient mobile communication services with lower prices.
He further pointed out that it was both opportunity and challenge for the industry: “in addition to the introduction of LTE and other emerging technologies, the network planning and network operating patterns also need to be changed. Network is the basis of user experiences, but we should pay more attention to the users besides the network and pay more attention to the network experiences besides the network performances. We also need to set up a series of user experience indicators, which should be definiteable, measurable, manageable and ultimately can be realized."
Launch the "MBB 2020" vision strategy
"Digital transformation brings great development opportunities for the mobile communication industry. From connections among people to the connections among things, we will usher in a more beautiful and intelligent world in the near future." Hu Houkun said, ICT is the main enabler of digital transformation in various industries, and mobile broadband network will be the most critical enabling technology during the digital transformation.
At the conference, Huawei launched the “MBB 2020” vision strategy -- by 2020, Huawei hopes to support 6.7 billion mobile broadband users and connect all the people that haven’t got access to the Internet; provide 1Gbps peak connection rate, thereby providing better user experiences; support 1 billion NB-IOT connections and forms seamless NB-IOT coverage.
Huawei believes that supporting for these connections needs technology innovations, business model innovations and cross-industrial collaborations. As a technology provider, Huawei will focus on spectrum frequency, air interface, architecture, integrative base stations and user experiences-based operation, and help the operators to build future-oriented networks.
"We hope people can actively join in and explore the implement of "MBB 2020" vision strategy with us,” Hu Houkun said, "we are at the beginning of a great era, mobile broadband is changing the world at an unprecedented speed, as long as we have dreams and cooperate with each other, we must be able to build a better world with full connections."