At Mobile World Congress Barcelona 2025, Huawei emphasised the urgent need for operators to construct future-proof optical networks to capitalise on the surge in data demand driven by AI-powered applications.
Huawei's Vice President of Optical Business Product Line, Kim Jin, took the stage to urge operators to build AI-centric F5.5G All-Optical Networks to fully seize the opportunities of the AI-driven era.
Kim highlighted how the global technology landscape is being reshaped by AI advancements. He noted that the AI industry is rapidly expanding, with 1,300 AI foundation models—including High-Flyer’s DeepSeek, OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Meta’s Llama, and Google’s Gemini—already launched. Additionally, shipments of AI-enabled smartphones and computers have grown by 22% year-on-year.
Kim specifically pointed to DeepSeek’s ability to match ChatGPT in performance while requiring only one-sixteenth of the training costs and just 1% of the inference costs of other large language models (LLMs). With its disruptive launch, DeepSeek has democratised LLMs for enterprises by lowering cost barriers for SMEs, unlocking what Kim described as "limitless development potential."
As AI becomes more accessible, new demands will arise for home broadband and transmission networks, including greater bandwidth, deterministic low latency, and highly reliable connections.
This evolution is already driving innovation in the optical industry. Many customers now enjoy 10Gbps home broadband, and metropolitan areas are achieving 1-millisecond ultra-low latency for data transmission.
Innovative optical products
At last year’s Ultra-Broadband Forum, Huawei unveiled a range of optical fibre network solutions. This year, the company introduced new products designed to enhance operator networks with AI in mind.
Kim first addressed the need for central offices (COs) to upgrade from a 100Mbit/s access rate to 1Gbit/s using 10G PON, paving the way for a future transition to 50G PON with 10Gbit/s speeds. He explained that while 100Mbit/s primarily supports web browsing, 1Gbit/s enables cloud services to become mainstream, while 10Gbit/s facilitates computing access. This evolution will shift Fibre-to-the-Home/Premises to Fibre-to-the-Room (FTTR), ensuring each room has a dedicated ultra-high-speed connection rather than relying on a single connectivity point for the entire building.
Huawei also expanded its intelligent Optical Line Terminal (OLT) portfolio, following last year’s launch of the MA5800T X17. The new models—X15, X8, and X2—offer varying capacities to meet diverse operator needs. These solutions boast the industry’s highest T-level forwarding capabilities, support high-density 50G PON, and enable operators to build long-term networks that can evolve over the next decade without platform changes. Additionally, the 50G PON board has doubled its port capacity from 8 to 16, allowing seamless inventory replacement.
A key innovation is the new FAN Intelligent Engine architecture, which integrates with Huawei’s Network Cloud Engine (NCE) to support application-level private line services, cross-user Wi-Fi optimisation, and on-demand computing power allocation—helping operators achieve "Network as a Service."
Enhancing metro connectivity
Huawei also advanced its AI-oriented All-Optical Metro Architecture, which previously enabled 1-millisecond latency for Data Centre Access (DCA) and Data Centre Interconnect (DCI). The company unveiled what it claims is the industry's highest-speed single-wavelength 2T board solution.
This 2T solution features three key innovations:
A new thin-film lithium niobate (TFLN) modulator increases single-wavelength capacity from 1.6Tbit/s to 2Tbit/s, reducing cost per bit by 20%.
The Ocean Current power-saving algorithm analyses real-time traffic to automatically shut down idle circuits, cutting power consumption by 50%.
Latency pre-detection and planning enable proactive fibre latency detection, AI service planning, and a latency map for optimised network performance.
Strengthening the optical backbone
Huawei also unveiled the K12 Optical Transport Network (OTN) platform, an evolution of last year’s OSN 9800 K series—the first DC-oriented OTN solution. The K12 enhances its predecessor with an improved Forward Error Correction (FEC) algorithm, delivering 30% better performance and extending 800G transmission distances by 1,000km.
The platform significantly reduces optical rerouting time from 10 seconds to under 50 milliseconds through Hybrid ASON fibre spectrum management, optimising costs while maintaining 99.9999% network availability. Furthermore, Huawei introduced hitless switching with dual-fed, dual-receive technology and a fast deduplication algorithm to ensure the AI computing efficiency.
Intelligent network control
Lastly, Huawei introduced the iMaster NCE platform for intelligent optical network management. For all-optical access, HBB Agent detects and rectifies faults in under a minute, reducing user complaints by 60%. For all-optical transmission, a digital map proactively identifies network and service risks, automatically troubleshooting issues within 15 minutes.
"AI is rapidly transforming the world, creating unprecedented opportunities for optical networks," said Kim.
"Huawei continues to innovate, helping operators build AI-centric F5.5G All-Optical Networks with high quality and efficiency to capture these new opportunities."
