Li Huidi of China Mobile: Autonomous Network and Computing Power Network Have Become Two Important Thrusts of Digital Transformation

2023-12-05 AsiaInfo

Recently, AsiaInfo and TM Forum (TeleManagement Forum) jointly held the “2023 Digital Leadership Summit in China”. Li Huidi, Director of TM Forum and Deputy General Manager of China Mobile (600941) said in his speech that with the in-depth development of the new round of sci-tech revolution and industrial transformation, the global digitalization wave has been surging, and the new generation of information technology has been accelerating its breakthrough, showing a development trend of organic integration and systematic innovation, deeply integrating into the whole process of economic, social and people's livelihood, promoting the in-depth evolution of information civilization, and providing important support for the construction of n new productivity. Data has become a new factor of production, computing power has become a new basic energy, and artificial intelligence has become a new production tool.

 

China Mobile is well aware of the significance of such a change and has been actively participating in it. China Mobile is committed to enhancing competitiveness and sustainability through digital transformation, realizing high-quality development of enterprise, and actively building new information infrastructure. Facing the new situation and new requirements, autonomous network and computing power network have become two important thrusts for China Mobile to realize digital transformation. 

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Li Huidi introduced that China Mobile has built the world's largest communication network with the largest number of users. To operate this network well, China Mobile took the lead in proposing and continuously improving the “Zero-X & Self-X” autonomous network system in the industry, continuously improved the level of network automation and intelligence, and continuously deepened the application development of artificial intelligence, digital twins and other technologies, promoted the transformation of O&M work from equipment-oriented and management-oriented to customer-oriented, business-oriented and service-oriented, realizing the digital transformation of the network itself, and helped thousands of industries conduct intelligent revolution and digital transformation. After four years of hard work, obvious results have been achieved: in terms of supporting customers' responses, the agile service capability of end-to-end intelligent scheduling of network resources has been built, the automation and transparency level of the whole process of business response has been continuously improved, and customers have been continuously provided with high-quality services with zero waiting. In addition, the cloud private network service can be opened at the minute level, while 5G private network and IoT services can be opened at the hour level. In terms of cost reduction and efficiency increase, China Mobile continued to strengthen the ability of automatic inspection of equipment, early prevention of hidden dangers, and automatic repair of faults, which led to an automation rate of core scenarios reaching 89% and major failures reduced by 70%; Machine vision technology has been adopted with full quality inspection, which helped save an average annual labor input of 3,200 people/year; Accurate energy conservation of base stations has been comprehensively promoted, which led to the energy consumption of 4G single station decreasing by 11% year-on-year, while that of 5G single station decreasing by 18% year-on-year. In terms of technological innovation, China Mobile made full use of the advantages of network data to innovate and develop a network big model. At present, the network big model with 13.9 billion parameters has been officially released, while an industry big model with 100 billion parameters is being developed and trained. In terms of industry drive, China Mobile has established an autonomous network industry chain, built a new carrier cluster of sci-tech innovation covering the whole country, and joined hands with 80 upstream and downstream partners to tackle the top ten innovation issues, sharing innovation achievements and building new advantages in information services.


Li Huidi further introduced that China Mobile has innovatively put forward the original concept of the computing power network and accelerated computing power to become a social-level service with one-click access and ready-to-use like hydropower. At present, the achievements have been made as follows: Firstly, the leading computing power network infrastructure has been built. China Mobile proposed a 4 + N + 31 + X data center capability layout system, built a three-level latency circle covering the whole country, and promoted the integrated development of computing power across regions, levels, cores, and subjects. The total scale of computing power exceeded 1 billion FLOPS, and the number of computing power servers put into production reached 800,000. In addition, the construction of the largest single computing center of global operators has been started, at the same time, the most advanced main artery for channeling more computing resources from the eastern areas to the less developed western regions has been built, which has set a world record transmitting 400G OTN in a long distance of 5616 kilometers. Secondly, the empowerment on the application of computing power networks has been promoted. China Mobile has deepened innovative applications such as “Storing East Data in the West” and “Rendering East Data in the West”, and created more than 20 industry models in large-scale off-site data storage, offline film and television rendering, AI model off-site training, etc., providing customers with convenient, fast-access and low-cost services. At the same time, China Mobile has launched computing power terminals such as cloud mobile phones and cloud computers to advance the wide popularization of computing power services and promote the grid connection management of internal and external general computing power, intelligent computing power, and super-computing. At present, it has realized the grid connection with more than ten social computing power, accessing heterogeneous computing power of over 190 million FLOPS, forming a new mode and new format of large-scale social computing power convergence and supply. Thirdly, the integrated scheduling capability for computing power networks has been developed. China Mobile has built and officially launched the full-network trial commercialization of the computing power network brain, and realized the opening, calculation, and capacity expansion of network and computing resources at the minute level, so as to support 115 kinds of computing power network services such as super-computing, intelligent computing, data express delivery, and channeling more computing resources from the eastern areas to the less developed western regions. Fourth, technological innovation in the computing power network has been led. China Mobile has laid out more than 30 key technologies in 10 directions, led more than 100 projects in standards organizations at home and abroad, and set up a computing power routing working group in the Internet Engineering Task Force, with China Mobile as the chairman of the standards working group. Facing the future, China Mobile will rely on TMF, CCSA and other global industrial platforms and standardization organizations to work closely with its partners.


Li Huidi put forward several suggestions on the spot: First, improve the top-level design of autonomous network, gather industry consensus, guide unified actions, and suggest speeding up the establishment of a global unified grading standard of autonomous networks, so as to lead the evolving direction and refine the implementation path. Second, carry out in-depth experience exchange of autonomous networks, promote the coordinated development of all parties in the industry, build multi-level communication mechanisms, share the latest business focus, practical experience and innovation achievements through normal communications, and jointly promote the realization of L4 goal of autonomous networks. Third, reach a consensus as soon as possible, speed up the transition of the computing power network from theory to industrial practice, promote the development of the computing power network from ubiquitous collaboration to integration and unification then to endogenous integration, realize omnipresent network, computing power and intelligence, work together to create a gathering place for computing power network industry resources, and establish a computing power network innovation ecosystem with multi-factor linkage, multi-chain integration, and multi-agent collaboration. Fourth, strengthen the capability of jointly overcoming difficulties on new technologies, create new kinetic energy for innovation and development, carry out joint research with the upstream and downstream partners of the industry around the network big model, digital twins, 6G new technologies, and new fields, bravely march forward the “no man's land” of new network technologies, and jointly build new advantages in information services.