China Eastern Airlines, China Unicom, and Huawei Wins GSMA GLOMO "Best Mobile Technology for Work" Award
[London, UK, February 25, 2020] China Eastern Airlines, China Unicom, and Huawei won GSMA’s “Best Mobile Technology for Work Award”. The award was given to honor the three parties for their successful deployment of the world's first 5G smart travel solution at China's Beijing Daxing International Airport. The award signifies the wide recognition of their sustained investment and efforts in developing 5G indoor coverage networks, nurturing 5G applications, and exploring the commercial value of 5G. The achievement will serve as valuable experience for further expansion of 5G in the civil aviation sector.
"A genuine enterprise mobility solution that showcases the potential of 5G to truly impact the B2B business model. An impressive ecosystem approach that provides a solid foundation for future collaborative development."--- Judges' Comments from 2020 GLOMO.
Picture of GLOMO
China Eastern Airlines is the world's seventh largest airline, providing high-quality air travel services to over 350,000 people every day. It has shown rapid growth and transformation, with digitalization prioritized as a key strategic agenda. Faced with increasing passenger numbers, this airline giant has been quite proactive in improving air travel through the adoption of new technology.
In September 2019, through close collaboration with China Unicom and Huawei, China Eastern Airlines launched an integrated smart travel solution based on 5G networks in the Beijing Daxing International Airport. Combining 5G with artificial intelligence and cloud computing, this system enables a series of innovative services, including one-time face recognition across the airport, personalized information services through its smart app, and end to end luggage management. The smart services touch upon 11 major air travel scenarios, greatly improving passenger experience and aviation operation efficiency. This further enables the airline to redefine smart, scenario-specific, and convenient air travel services.
5G coverage is achieved across the airport with China Unicom's 5G networks, which are powered by Huawei's digital indoor system 5G LampSite. The speeds attained in field tests exceeded 1.2 Gbps, showing that the network meets the requirements to provide ultimate 5G experience to passengers. On top of high speed, the networks boast high reliability, high capacity, ultra-low latency, and full-service support, providing sufficient support for the airline to implement these smart travel services. Developed on a digital architecture, they are easy to deploy and deliver visualized operation and maintenance, while adding support for many types of 5G industry applications over the long run.
Xi Sheng, Executive Vice President of China Eastern Airlines, said: "We were happy to join China Unicom and Huawei in winning this prestigious award for our joint 5G smart travel solution. As an international airline, China Eastern Airlines is committed to making the best of new technology to innovate on business models and upgrading services by an Internet-based development path. This project brings 5G innovative applications into civil aviation, and represents our persistent drive for smarter air travel. We are planning to expand this project to four other airports in Shanghai and Beijing as well as many other hubs. We are more than happy to collaborate with partners to explore the innovative applications of new technology in civil aviation in order to provide convenient, high-quality travel services, and simultaneously promote the overall development of the civil aviation industry."
Liangliang BaoJun, Senior Vice President of China Unicom, said: "China Unicom is committed to exploring 5G-based industry applications, building open, win-win ecosystem and converged innovative models, and promoting the innovation and fusion of 5G with industry applications. This is part of our efforts to promote industry digitalization and increase the adoption of connected and smart solutions across industries. We are honored to have been recognized by GSMA for our exploration in the transportation industry. We will continue to collaborate with partners to build 5G industry ecosystem and promote the digitalization process across industries using leading 5G network technology."
Marvin Chen, President of Huawei's Digital Indoor System Product Line, said: "Huawei is happy to have contributed to the 5G smart travel project. Accelerated adoption of 5G in worldwide commercial applications brings diverse service experiences to individuals and homes. It also facilitates digital transformation across industries and injects new vitality, increasing productivity for our society. The 5G smart travel solution is a big milestone of accelerated 5G development, benchmarking future services. As a core component of the project, Huawei's 5G LampSite provides high bandwidth and boasts a high level of integration, simultaneously blending in well with surrounding environments. Huawei will continue to innovate on 5G technology in order to promote 5G to create greater business and social value."
The annual GLOMO Awards were set up to recognize pioneering feats of mobile technology. Prizes are handed out in a variety of different categories, including Mobile Technology, Connected Consumer, Industry X, and Tech4Good. More than 250 independent judges from across the world are involved in the award process. The panels comprise leading industry experts, analysts, journalists, academics and in some cases representatives from mobile operators. This Best Mobile Technology for Work Award seeks to identify mobile-based innovation in work based environments, from service innovation, building management, logistics, security, data management, CRM, building loyalty, smart factories and enhancing productivity and much more in digitizing the workplace.