Page 20 - SAMENA Trends - March 2020

COVID-19 VS TELECOM INDUSTRY SAMENA TRENDS

5G + Healthcare: Technology in Action

With the COVID-19 pandemic rampant China Unicom, and China Telecom—came and low latency data transfer. This ensured
across the world, there is a new meaning together and covered both of the new timely action even in a situation where
for digital connectivity for all of us now. hospital sites within 72 hours through the critical patients were increasing and there
Social distancing and near lockdowns installation of pole 5G sites on location. was a shortage of medical staff.
in various countries have reminded us
how dependent social welfare and even The initiative was so impactful that the next This technical synergy proved instrumental
economic growth of a country is on digital step was to interconnect other hospitals for China to control the pandemic as
transformation. In this time of difficulty, in major cities with 5G due to the spread quickly as it did. Similar initiatives are
pioneers of connectivity and the telco of the virus. Again, the national operators now being rolled out in nations around the
operators across the world have stepped stepped up and worked on a wartime scale world as we learn from the early instances
up to the challenge, and have come up to cover nine cities in seven provinces with of COVID-19 response.
with novel ways to utilize 5G— the latest 5G, comprising of 305 new sites within 72
generation in telecom infrastructure. hours, which was considered an important 5G for surging online services
achievement of cooperation in technology Many of us have been spending more time
Of course there are various challenges deployment. at home due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
faced by operators in these trying times, Home network usage was the most
especially in the most affected country Furthermore, for the prevention of impacted category. This has resulted in a
where the fight against COVID-19 is COVID-19, the combination of 5G + sharp increase in data consumption across
unprecedented. The pandemic presents AI was used to detect face masks on the board, with the classic busy-hour
telecom operators with new challenges medical professionals through cameras model shifting and the data throughput hot
on multiple fronts, which can be broadly and potential patients through thermal spots changing locations.
classified into three areas: emergency cameras with zero touch. For detection,
communications, a surge in online cloud computing supported by 5G In particular, we can see three key scenarios
services, and how to improve the network was used for mobile test laboratories, contributing to the spike of online services:
capabilities. The early lessons learned where data from gene sequencers was
in each of these three areas can help uploaded to the cloud for enhanced virus 1. Remote Education: As schools have
companies and nations in the Middle identification. been suspended, this has created a need
East to better cope with the COVID-19 for hundreds of millions of students to
pandemic, bringing the true value of digital With the high-bandwidth broadband shift to online education. Taking China
to local communities. connectivity and quick deployment, the as an early reference point, this caused
combinations of using 5G, AI and cloud also usage time per person to increase by
Emergency Communications Powered by enabled other key medical applications more than 80%. We also see the average
5G + AI + Cloud in the emergency. This included remote speed required for these services is
There is an increasing demand on diagnosis, collaboration, consultations 6.8 Mbps in 90% of the cases for no
healthcare networks worldwide, and with high quality video communication buffering in online education
ICT is proving to be a vital component in
addressing those requirements. A clear
example of that can be seen in the Hubei
province of China, where Wuhan is located.

At the onset of the outbreak, there were a
total 48 hospitals designated for COVID-19
patients with the capacity of 26,911 bed
spaces—which were clearly not enough
with the amount of new cases coming in
every day. So the government built two
new hospitals with a combined capacity
of 2,600 beds in a record time of ten days.
Both of these hospital locations were
required to have 5G connectivity for high
speed and real-time communications. All
three national operators— China Mobile,

20 MARCH 2020