At MWC Barcelona 2025, Li Peng, Huawei's Corporate Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales & Service, delivered a keynote on how carriers can make the most of AI to fully unleash the value of their networks.
He shared his thoughts on how carriers can fully monetize network capabilities and drive sustainable growth by evolving to 5G NSA, 5G SA, and 5G-A.
Over the past year, 5G-A has entered large-scale development thanks to joint effort between industry partners and carriers around the world. Li predicts that symbiosis between 5G-A and AI technologies will stimulate double-digit growth in both DOU (data of usage) and ARPU (average revenue per user) from mobile subscribers. "We're rapidly entering a fully intelligent world. Intelligent applications are spreading everywhere, placing new demands on networks," said Li.
"By embracing and evolving 5G, we can unlock the infinite potential of mobile networks. Huawei is willing and ready to work with carriers and industry partners around the world to promote digital enablement, reinforce network foundations, and bring AI to all. Together, we can shape the D.N.A. for an intelligent world."
AI is changing human-machine interaction, driving different requirements for latency
Advancements in open-source AI models like DeepSeek are making it easier to develop AI applications and services. According to Huawei's Intelligent World 2030 report, by 2030, there will be six billion mobile AI agents around the world. These agents will use networks day and night, generating massive amounts of new traffic and transforming the mobile Internet.
The ways that people interact with machines are also evolving, from simple text-based communications to voice, gestures, and more multi-modal interactions. This progress has made interactions more real-time and convenient, and it's giving rise to a wave of new innovative applications.
For example, people can interact more naturally with their devices using AI-powered voice assistants. On cloud phones, AI-powered avatars can provide visual feedback as well, creating a more personal experience for services like health monitoring, making the mobile experience far more accessible and productive for all walks of life.
In addition to more natural human-machine interaction, we will see wide adoption of AI robots. In homes, they will provide care and companionship.
For example, with multi-modal interactivity, children can engage more naturally with AI-powered educational robots, receiving responses to their questions in mere milliseconds. Applications like this can help improve learning efficiency by 300%. In industries, AI robots will help people work more efficiently and improve overall productivity.
AI applications like this are spreading fast and wide, raising the bar for network capabilities. To support applications like these, however, networks need to be able to provide guaranteed latency, which will require ongoing evolution from 5G NSA to 5G SA, and eventually 5G-A. Carriers can also adopt innovative technologies like CUPS (Control and User Plane Separation) and GBR (Guaranteed Bit Rate) to reduce basic latency and ensure differentiated, deterministic latency for specific scenarios.
AI-enabled content production and distribution is raising the bar for upload & download speeds
Li went on to explain how AI is transforming how content is produced and distributed. For example, AIGC technology makes it possible to generate hour-long 2D and 3D videos with a single click. Meanwhile, AI recommendations are more targeted than ever, allowing the distribution of more personalized content to broader audiences across the Internet. Both of these trends will cause network traffic to surge over the next five years, placing unprecedented demands on networks. To keep up, carriers will need more spectrum, greater network capacity, and much larger uplink and downlink bandwidth.
Specifically, the large downlink capabilities of 5G NSA networks will allow users to stream HD videos seamlessly, driving a significant surge in network traffic. With larger uplink capabilities, 5G SA networks can ensure a stable and smooth livestreaming experience for new applications like AI-enabled digital avatars. 5G-A will take network capabilities a step further by delivering both large uplink and downlink, providing a solid low-latency experience for applications like AI-enabled 3D XR glasses.
Diverse AI services will need experience-centric network coverage
Both AI-powered cloud and mobile devices are making intelligent services more accessible, and the industry will see growing demand for experience-centric network coverage. According to third-party data, cloud phones and cloud drives will be used by over one billion people by 2030, each of whom will need fast access to cloud computing power. In addition, intelligent in-vehicle applications will require full coverage across cities, highways, and the countryside to provide a continuous and reliable mobility experience.
This is where 5G NSA and SA come into play. The evolution to 5G-A will also be important for applications like AI wearables and smart IoT. These networks can effectively handle concurrency in both hotspots and the edge, ensuring a smooth experience for tens of billions of new connections for people, and hundreds of billions of new IoT connections between things.
Growing network complexity will drive evolution towards application-oriented O&M
AI will bring more complex application scenarios and a more diverse range of experience requirements. From a networking perspective, this will drive a shift from traditional, resource-oriented O&M to a more application-oriented approach.
Some carriers are already developing O&M systems based on AI agents. These agents can understand application needs and optimize network resources automatically.
For operations enablement, these AI agents can use digital twins to predict personalized needs for individual users, helping shorten service time-to market from days to minutes. For network maintenance, AI agents with self-learning capabilities can predict and locate faults in seconds, increasing troubleshooting efficiency by 30%. And for network optimization, digital sandboxes can simulate the traffic of real-world applications, allowing AI agents to analyze traffic patterns and optimize networks 24/7 based on application needs.
Early-movers are scaling up 5G-A deployment to accelerate business monetization in the age of AI
"New network capabilities will give rise to new business models," continued Li. "Carriers can go beyond monetizing traffic and start monetizing experience itself."
Specifically, there are four priorities that can help carriers better prepare for new opportunities in the age of AI:
- Differentiated and deterministic latency for a smoother experience
- Increased network capacity for much larger downlink and uplink rates
- Experience-centric networks to provide applications with the right amount of resources
- AI-powered O&M to help keep everything running smoothly
Right now, carriers around the world are actively exploring new ways to monetize experience based on multiple factors like speed, latency, and VIP benefits. 5G-A is also speeding up adoption of innovative services, like AI cloud phones and AI educational toys. Carriers in China, Asia Pacific, and the Middle East, already provide advanced experience packages for millions of livestreaming and cloud gaming service subscribers.
5G-A and AI also have the potential to transform how we work, live, and travel. Businesspeople can hold smart conferences anytime, anywhere. Sports fans can enjoy smooth, multi-view livestreaming. And travellers won't have to worry about laggy networks in hot spots.
At the same time, with upgraded network capabilities, carriers can also expand into the B2B2C market. For example, Chinese carriers are working with over 100 industries, including insurance and catering companies, to provide AI New Calling services through Open APIs. This has helped them increase income from industry customers by a factor of 10 via 5–15% sales commissions.
