China Unicom and Huawei co-hosted an innovation summit during Mobile World Congress 2025, themed 5G-A Empowering, AI Transforming, Digital Living.
At the summit China Unicom unveiled its AI Unites All plan, which envisages utilizing AI agents to comprehensively upgrade its home cloud and achieve full convergence of AI across a range of personal and home scenarios. Senior representatives from the operator and its partners gathered on stage for a signing ceremony to launch AI Unites All during the summit.
AI Unites All was introduced by Jian Qin, General Manager of China Unicom who outlined the operators’ latest 1+1+N innovations and best practices which comprises converged architecture, plus converged agent, plus converged services.
According to Jian "China Unicom remains committed to technological innovation as our guiding principle, actively embracing the Al revolution, and contributing 'Unicom Intelligence' and 'Unicom Solutions' to global smart transformation. With forward-looking planning and sustained investment in Al, we prioritize integrated innovation across five pillars: computing infrastructure, network connectivity, data resources, model development, and application scenarios. Our goal is to lead and drive the convergence of Al technologies and industrial applications."
Welcoming the initiative, Louise Easterbrook, CFO of the GSMA highlighted the alignment of China Unicom’s vision to the goals of the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative. As AI becomes mainstream the potential for it to enhance operations is rapidly increasing, as evidenced by the 37 industry-specific AI models China Unicom has built in the past year with its own large language model (LLM).
Easterbrook noted the rapid development and use of AI LLMs highlights the need for a Responsible AI Roadmap and an agreed set of Open Telecom LLM Benchmarks which the GSMA is currently promoting. Summarising the relationship between 5G and AI she said: “We are halfway through the 5G story and at the beginning of the AI story… it feels like a moment in time.”
Yang Chaobin, Huawei Board Member and CEO of the ICT Business Group said that that Huawei looks forward to working with China Unicom to support their AI Unites All strategy. "We will do this by facilitating a wide range of intelligent user applications with the latest AI technologies. This will allow China Unicom to create new AI service portals with a global impact and make intelligence more inclusive for all," he said.
As a strategic partner of China Unicom, Huawei and China Unicom maintain close cooperation and work together on converged AI innovation to seize new business opportunities in the AI era. Both parties have built a cloud-based AI service platform for individual and home users, combining cloud, computing, networks, and devices for a unified AI service portal.
For example, during the Asian Winter Games, China Unicom launched personalized and cloud-based AI phones with the AI assistant named Tone. The product uses mainstream foundation models and 5G-A networks to provide users with a consistent experience in all scenarios and secure and reliable AI services. Huawei and China Unicom have also been using AI to empower sectors like government, healthcare, and manufacturing, as well as cultural and creative industries, making network experience more secure, reliable, flexible, scalable, efficient, and collaborative.
China Unicom has also been actively engaged in advancing synergy between AI and networks. For smart home services, China Unicom has been a leading player in whole-house fibre broadband. The carrier launched the industry's first HI-CON (Home Intelligent Collaborative Optical Network) communications system that features optical and Wi-Fi collaboration. This system is powered by an intelligent scheduling algorithm that greatly improves overall network experience for home users.
Wang Limin, SVP Marketing, China Unicom, discussed how the AI Unites All initiative will drive unified communication by applying AI powered digital intelligence to provide innovation in networks, technology and services simultaneously. This will, Wang said, enable operators to transition from being communications service providers to become technology service providers and to provide more convenient and efficient services to customers. Operators should integrate network technology and services by using AI tools such as Deep Seek for converged innovation.
Hao Liqian, DGM & SVP Government & Enterprise, China Unicom outlined the scale of growth for AI, which he said is estimated to account for 3.5% of global GDP by 2030. In addition, Hao shared China Unicom’s new vision for AI, which comprises implementing an integrated innovation strategy to provide accessible computing which is available everywhere and to everyone like water, to provide intelligence everywhere like chips, and to bridge the gap between data and knowledge with computing.
Meng Shusen, CEO, China Unicom Global, focused on how China Unicom believes that open collaboration with a range of global organisations will help accelerate global technology innovation. China Unicom Global’s Hong Kong based Innovation Research Institute leads international collaboration efforts with universities, research organisations and global enterprises, through activities taking place worldwide, including in Sao Paolo, Frankfurt, Johannesburg, Dubai and Singapore, as well as at multiple locations throughout the Chinese mainland.
According to Meng, international collaboration on 5G-A and AI will strengthen global interconnection and build a strong network infrastructure base, promote the secure flow of data and strengthen global data governance and trust, develop the Open Gateway open ecosystem, share green and low-carbon technologies to promote sustainable development and promote AI for Good.
Representatives from other ecosystem partners including Edward Tiedemann Jr., SVP, Qualcomm Technology, Roger Suess, CEO, Green, and David Joosten, Director, Vodafone Business International rounded off the summit, with presentations on topics including energy use and sustainability, where collaboration between AI and 5G-A delivered by the AI Unites All initiative will drive innovation.
