During MWC Shanghai 2025, Bob Chen, President of Huawei's Optical Business Product Line, delivered a keynote speech at the F5.5G All-Optical Industry Summit to share Huawei's continuous innovation in F5.5G all-optical networks from four dimensions.
By providing ultra-gigabit and 10-Gigabit broadband, differentiated network experience, brand-new smart home terminals, and rich home applications, Huawei's solutions help carriers build high-value packages that deliver a premium AI application experience to users.
With the rapid development of AI models, terminals, and application ecosystems, AI is rapidly entering every device, home, and organization. As a high-value scenario of AI applications, homes are becoming digital and smart, and AI is being applied to various daily activities such as healthcare, education, security, and entertainment. Many carriers consider the home as a core scenario in their AI transformation strategy, with more than 1 billion gateways deployed in homes around the world. Carriers are extending access networks to rooms through fiber to the room (FTTR), giving them a natural advantage in smart home entry. According to Bob Chen, to achieve home business growth in the AI era, carriers must provide users with new value, including bandwidth upgrades, differentiated experiences, brand-new terminal products, and rich home applications. Huawei's F5.5G all-optical network solution has extensive innovations in these four dimensions:
Bandwidth upgrades: innovative 50G PON for ultra-gigabit and 10-Gigabit rate upgrade
Bandwidth is a key concern for users. With the surge of AI applications, the upgrade from gigabit to ultra-gigabit and 10-Gigabit has become a significant trend. Currently, nearly 60 provincial and municipal carriers in China have released 2000 Mbps packages, with 29 releasing 10 Gbps packages. Huawei has developed innovative end-to-end 10 Gigabit solutions, including the industry's first 50G PON FTTR that supports 10G ports, as well as boards with a high port density compatible with GPON, 10G PON, and 50G PON. These solutions help carriers quickly deploy ultra-gigabit and 10 Gbps services while protecting their live network investments.
Differentiated experience: E2E network capability upgrades providing differentiated network experience assurance for users
Differentiation is an important engine for high-quality industrial development. For example, airlines have established a business model of experience monetization in the aviation industry by providing differentiated cabin services such as business class and first class. In the AI era, carriers need to build a similar business model for the home broadband scenario. Against this backdrop, Huawei has built a full series of solutions that deliver differentiated experience assurance. First, the OLT works with edge computing to detect requirements from different users and applications. Then, the FTTR, OLT, and NCE form an end-to-end solution to provide differentiated network assurance for different users, such as diamond, gold, and silver services. Even when the network is congested, service quality for high-value users is not affected.
New terminals: AI Home Hub
In the AI era, Huawei has launched a new AI home hub that can help carriers upgrade home broadband packages. Compared with a traditional home gateway, Huawei's AI home hub has four advantages. First, it integrates FTTR and Wi-Fi 7 technologies to support a concurrent rate over 10G. The mobile smart middle screen supports content sharing and video transfer between large, medium-sized, and small screens, allowing users to easily access smart applications on the cloud. In addition, the AI home hub has a built-in microphone and speaker, and supports voiceprint recognition to implement precise voice interaction with users anywhere at home. The built-in computing power can also support AI agent deployment by carriers and Huawei.
Rich home applications: AI entry for providing rich smart applications to home users
To promote new home AI services, carriers can provide various intelligent applications for users based on the home AI interaction entry. Huawei has developed an AI agent to provide a unified AI interaction entry for users. It implements cross-scenario and cross-device intelligent linkage. Huawei also works with carriers and ecosystem partners to build a wide range of AI applications in vertical scenarios; for example, 10G cloud NAS that supports on-demand 8K video playback and ultra-fast transmission of large files. In addition, based on the computing, storage, sensing, and video capabilities of the AI home hub, the AI agent can support local featured applications, such as real-time alarm reporting and elderly care through 3D optical sensing.
To increase home broadband revenue in the AI era, carriers not only need to implement the preceding innovations on the home network side, but also need to upgrade the entire bearer network. By working with carriers, Huawei has developed a 1ms city computing network construction mode. The OXC all-optical switching technology is used to transmit cloud computing resources and AI applications to users through deterministic low-latency networks. By opening a "fast lane" for AI applications, the network latency is visible and manageable on the all-optical transport capacity map. Using the 1ms city computing network, carriers can take advantage of their premium networks to carry their own AI services and build a high-quality service model similar to "self-owned logistics" + "self-operated stores". In China, 11 cities have completed the deployment. It is estimated that construction will start in 40 more cities in China and many more international cities this year.
AI has brought a once-in-a-decade business opportunity for the home broadband industry. In conclusion, Bob Chen said: "Huawei is looking forward to working with global carriers to build F5.5G all-optical networks to provide users with ultra-gigabit and 10-Gigabit broadband, differentiated experience assurance, brand-new smart home terminals, and rich home applications. Hand in hand, carriers and Huawei can improve user experience and achieve win-win growth in home broadband business in the AI era."
