VIEWPOINT
Communications service providers across the world are adopting strategies to grow revenue from the enterprise segment as they play a crucial role in the digital transformation of enterprises. The ever-increasing 5G ecosystem helps them provide reliable and ultra-high-speed networks while allowing them to offer innovative use cases to businesses to improve productivity, operational efficiency and customer experience.
China Mobile International (CMI), one of the leading information service providers in the world, is at the forefront of providing a superior experience for the B2B digital service. It has already built more than one million 5G base stations and its number of 5G users has ranked top in China. In addition, the service provider has also built a large number of 5G industry applications to address the needs of enterprises from different business verticals.
“CMI will establish a new information service system of “5G + computing network + capability service” to provide quality services of “Intelligent Global Connectivity” to global customers. CMI will also transfer its excellent experience in China to global markets to promote 5G+ capabilities, including 5G industry solutions (smart factories and smart ports), 5G application capabilities such as OneCyber, 5G platform services and 5G consulting, and information services,” explains Harley Tan, general manager of the Product Management Department of China Mobile International.
Further, with respect to the computing network, cloud and network integration will be the key investment direction in the next two to three years. “Global traffic will become decentralized, and CMI’s global network will evolve towards computing network, achieving leapfrog development. For example, we will continue to expand terrestrial cable resources, build global data centers, improve core data center capabilities, and continuously cultivate potentials to optimize the overall computing network,” added Harley Tan.
CMI is also planning to build cloud-network integration service capabilities, further promote 5G+ cooperation, develop ecosystems, and build capabilities such as big data, Artificial Intelligence (AI), blockchain, and security to support the intelligent digital transformation of the whole society.
Differentiated network capabilities of CMI
As digital pervasiveness continues to grow, there is an urgent need to build an advanced ICT infrastructure. As a global digital player, CMI will build an ultra-broadband all-optical high-speed network over the next ten years. This network will cover 87 countries and regions around the world, enabling fast access to 138 cities and 230 PoPs.
“CMI is capable of providing an experience featuring ultra-large capacity, ultra-low latency, and high security and reliability for industry digital connections around the world, enabling every region, enterprise, and individual to enjoy the dividends of digital economy development,” says Harley Tan.
The growing consumption of digital services coupled with the popularity of several high-bandwidth consuming applications means that service providers are constantly under pressure to increase the network capacity. CMI has built a future-oriented ultra-broadband network in the Southeast Asia region as the traffic in the region touched 467 Tbps, with a growth rate of over 40%. It will use the ultra-high-speed 400G technology, with the single fiber capability reaching 100 Tbps, to meet the future requirements of massive cross-border data transfer.
Apart from this, large, medium and small businesses can benefit from the networks with ultra-low latency. “CMI is dedicated to building low-latency connections, providing better service experience for enterprises moving to the cloud, and building high-quality networks. CMI adopts the advanced OXC all-optical networks, which allow flexible selection between different routes and enable end-to-end latency visibility, meeting the ultra-low latency connection requirements of the region,” adds Harley Tan.
The third key area is ensuring security and reliability for businesses during their digital transformation process and migration to the cloud. “More than 90% of the banking, finance, government, and manufacturing customers regard high security and reliability as the primary indicators of private data lines. CMI uses advanced network protection mechanisms and disaster recovery and backup policies to protect enterprises’ core data,” says Harley Tan.
In Conclusion
As the digital transformation picks up in all geographies, the enterprise market offers massive growth opportunities to the CSPs. The service providers will do well to adopt strategies used by CMI in addressing the needs of the businesses.