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With the rapid development of AI models, devices, and application ecosystems, AI uptake among individuals, homes, and organizations is increasing rapidly. Private homes have become a high-value scenario for AI applications, with AI being rapidly applied to all kinds of services, including those for healthcare, education, security, and entertainment. Meanwhile, carriers have deployed more than 1 billion smart gateways in homes around the world and are extending access networks to rooms through fiber to the room (FTTR). This gives them an innate advantage to harness the entry point to home services. We believe that for carriers to accelerate their home business growth in the AI era, they will need to show they can deliver new tangible benefits to users, including bandwidth upgrade, differentiated experience, new AI devices, and more home applications (see Figure 1). This is where Huawei's F5G-A all-optical network solution comes in as it addresses all four of these areas.
Figure 1: User loyalty and package upgrades deliver perceivable value for users and increase revenue
Bandwidth upgrade: Innovative 50G PON for multi-gigabit and 10 gigabit access
Bandwidth is one of the key metrics that users care about most. With the surge we are seeing in new AI applications, more and more carriers are upgrading their offerings from gigabit to multi-gigabit and 10 gigabit. Currently, nearly 60 provincial and municipal carriers in China have released 2,000 Mbps packages, and 29 have released 10 Gbps packages. To support this upgrade, Huawei has developed innovative end-to-end 10 Gbps solutions, including the industry's first 50G PON FTTR that supports 10 Gbps ports, as well as high-port-density boards that are compatible with GPON, 10G PON, and 50G PON. These solutions help carriers quickly deploy multi-gigabit and 10 gigabit services while protecting their existing network investment.
Differentiated experience: Service assurance for higher-value users through E2E network capability upgrades
Differentiation has long been an important engine for industry development. Airlines, for example, leverage experience monetization by providing differentiated cabin services such as business class and first class. In the AI era, carriers will need to build a similar business model for the home broadband scenario.
Huawei has built a holistic solution that delivers differentiated experience assurance to help carriers do this. In this solution, the OLT comes with edge computing capabilities to detect specific user and application requirements. The FTTR, OLT, and Network Cloud Engine (NCE) form an end-to-end solution to provide different levels of network assurance for different users. This could look like diamond, gold, and silver service offerings. Using this solution, even when the network is congested, the network service quality of higher-value users is not affected.
New devices: AI Homehub
Huawei has launched a new device – the AI Homehub – that can help carriers upgrade home broadband packages. Compared with a traditional home gateway, Huawei's AI Homehub has four advantages. First, it integrates FTTR and Wi-Fi 7 technologies to support concurrent 10 Gbps rates. Second, it comes with a mobile intelligent panel that supports content sharing and video transfer between screens of all sizes, allowing users to easily access intelligent applications on the cloud. Third, the AI Homehub has a built-in microphone and speaker, and supports voiceprint recognition to enable precise voice interaction with users anywhere in the home. The fourth highlight is the hub's built-in compute that supports the deployment of AI agents by both carriers and Huawei.
More home applications: Service diversification through AI entry points
To promote AI services in home scenarios, carriers can also provide a number of new intelligent applications by using a home AI entry point. Through this portal, carriers can tap into more opportunities to serve home users. Huawei has developed an AI agent that serves as one such entry point that intelligently links scenarios and devices. Huawei is also working with carriers and ecosystem partners to build a wide range of AI applications in vertical scenarios, such as 10 Gbps cloud network attached storage (NAS) that supports on-demand 8K video playback and ultra-fast transmission of large files. In addition, the AI Homehub's computing, storage, sensing, and video capabilities allow carriers to provide featured applications at the user end. One typical application is AI-enabled home care, where 3D optical sensing is used to help look after elderly residents of the home. This kind of service can issue real-time alarms when problems are detected.
Bearer network upgrade: Fast-tracking AI applications with 1 ms latency metro networks
To increase home broadband revenue, in addition to the preceding innovations on the home network side, entire bearer networks also need to be optimized. Bearer network upgrades will enable users to more easily access computing power anytime, anywhere. This is why we have worked with carriers in China to explore a new solution: metropolitan networks with 1 ms latency to access compute. These networks use end-to-end optical cross-connect (OXC) switching to transmit cloud computing resources to end users through a deterministic low-latency network, accelerating user adoption of AI applications.
These 1 ms latency metro networks represent a number of breakthroughs Huawei has made in network architecture, devices, and management and control.
Network architecture: Huawei has proposed a groundbreaking "One Horizontal, One Vertical" all-optical architecture. Here, "One Horizontal" refers to all-optical interconnection with 1 ms latency between data centers in a city, combining scattered computing nodes into one efficient, synergized "computer". "One Vertical" refers to all-optical interconnection with 1 ms latency between users and data centers, ensuring optimal AI application experience for users.
Devices: Traditional OXC switching devices are bulky and difficult to deploy at the edge of a metropolitan area network (MAN) and other scenarios. To solve this problem, Huawei has developed innovative materials and algorithms that reduce the size of optical switching devices by 55%. These devices can be flexibly deployed in more scenarios to support end-to-end OXC deployment.
Management and control: Huawei has also developed the Transmission Digital Map, a transport capacity map that makes network latency visible and manageable. Huawei Transmission Digital Map clearly displays the latency of all links on the network, similarly to how a flight tracker displays the status of that day's flights. This helps carriers plan optimal low-latency paths for AI applications, and optimize the paths for service assurance in real time.
By leveraging 1 ms latency metro networks, carriers can take full advantage of their best networks to deploy their own AI services and build a business model similar to that of JD.com, who has distinguished itself in China thanks to its self-owned stores and self-owned logistics network. Using this business model, carriers can guarantee deterministic experience for their own AI services, and provide best-effort experience for common Internet access and third-party services (see Figure 2). So far, 11 cities in China have deployed 1 ms latency metro networks. Nearly 40 more cities in China are expected to start deployment this year, and many carriers outside China are also on track to start deployment.
Figure 2: 1 ms latency metro networks help carriers use their best resources to deliver premium services
AI presents a once-in-a-decade business opportunity for the home broadband industry. Huawei is looking forward to working with global carriers to build F5G-A all-optical networks, which will provide users with tangible bandwidth upgrades, differentiated experience, new AI devices, and more home applications. Together, Huawei and carriers will take user experience to a new level and accelerate home business growth in the AI era.
