Page 100 - SAMENA Trends - June-July 2020

ARTICLE SAMENA TRENDS

initiatives aimed at putting themselves at
the forefront of the global IoT market. 5G for smart IoT
The carrier believes one of the crucial China Mobile expects the deep integration between information technology and the
elements to getting the whole ecosystem economy enabled by the upcoming launch of 5G to allow an expanding range of
working effectively is collaboration services and applications based on smart internet-of-things (IoT), and more real-
between providers, especially to support time information that will promote the development of a smart society.
the big transformation that the IoT sector
will undergo in the developing 5G era. In Among the applications it sees as having major potential for addressing needs in
this sense, CMI is well-prepared, running modern society and boosting social development are:
a global partnership initiative for 5G that it
set up over four years ago to bolster the • 5G+ agriculture: high-precision farming aided by 5G-connected sensors that can
joint development of borderless products monitor air, soil, light and other environmental factors to help maximise crop
and services. yields by optimising growing conditions; also, cloud platforms for smart farming
to enable monitoring of health for livestock.
The Hand-in-Hand Program (hi-H • 5G+ crisis management: 5G cloud-based emergency disposal systems to
Program), which now has 26 members, remotely manage explosive threats and big data analytics to predict natural
including many major global operators, disasters and enable early warnings, aiding emergency response and reducing
has a footprint covering almost 3 billion the impact of these events.
mobile subscribers around the world. • Integrating 5G into uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) for a wide variety of
It encourages the sharing of innovative applications to benefit society, including communication in emergency rescue,
concepts and use cases through firefighting in high-rise buildings and forests, city surveillance, inspection
workshops and working groups, as of electric power lines, remote sensing for land surveys and forestry disaster
well as developments to aid platform assessments, and maritime applications such as monitoring marine pollution,
interoperability and the use of local SIM inspecting oil spills and searching for evidence of illegal activities at sea.
card resources (see box: “Hand-in-Hand
Program (hi-H Program”). opportunities on an unprecedented scale On top of all this, the collection of data in
(see box: “5G for smart IoT”). edge clouds enables in-depth analyses
Niu thinks this kind of initiative can help to help further improve processes and
operators to maximise the potential of As an example, one of the most interesting integrate data from other manufacturing
services in that sector. “The hi-H Program fields involves a prototype China Mobile systems, building the intelligence of the
facilitates discussions to help members created of an automated guided vehicle overall machinery over time so that it can
move forward with their 5G roaming (AGV) in collaboration with Ericsson, a enable slicker operations.
service roadmap and keep them abreast technology that the two demonstrated at
on the latest IoT developments,” he says. the Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2019. Having laid the groundwork in anticipation
“Together, we can build a smarter, more of some serious IoT growth in the coming
integrated IoT ecosystem.” This could be a key growth segment, as years, CMI certainly has no intention of
AGVs gain momentum as a use case with slowing down its development in this
At the cutting edge real potential for improving efficiency and sector, says Niu – with plans to develop
Some of China Mobile’s activities in the reducing costs in manufacturing, the port both “horizontally” by expanding network
industrial sector have also shown the sector and other industries – with 5G coverage and “vertically” by boosting
potential for use cases enabled by the making equipment such as AGV tractors, the scope for applications in different
combination of 5G and IoT, wrapping in pallet movers and forklift machines more industries.
some of the most cutting-edge concepts viable.
as the industry has moved towards the “CMI will continue to work with industry
latest generation of mobile technology – Testing of the prototype indicated the players to drive IoT development
such as network slicing, edge computing potential for incorporating processes that and innovation, and we will see more
and data intelligence. can make technologies even more efficient applications available to a wide range
This comes along with China Mobile being and faster. These include network slicing, of sectors,” he says. By maintaining a
granted a commercial 5G licence in 2019 which can help create dedicated networks focus on this segment, CMI hopes to truly
in its domestic market, quickly followed for industrial use and aid with data security, capitalise on the opportunities of the 5G
by the launch of its 5G+ brand ahead of and edge computing, which meets the need era – catapulting not just its own business
the technology’s launch. The company for bringing data ever closer to the edge of into the future, but those of partners across
expects that move to have all kinds of the network to make traffic more local and the industry and their customers.
implications for expanding the scope of drastically reduce latency while improving
smart IoT applications and harnessing stability and reducing the complexity of
data to aid social development, creating AGV equipment.

100 JUNE-JULY 2020