China Telecom, Huawei Put Spotlight on 5G at Beijing Expo 2019

China Telecom and Huawei are working together to provide an end-to-end 5G network for Beijing Expo 2019, a world horticultural exposition presented by the Bureau International des Expositions and held in Beijing’s Yanqing District. The expo opens on April 29 and runs through October 7, 2019.

Nearly 110 countries and international organizations as well as over 120 non-official exhibitors are participating in the expo, which is a record number of exhibitors. The Beijing Expo is also the first to use 5G technology.

China Telecom and Huawei are teaming up to provide an end-to-end 5G network for the expo offering an unprecedented combination of garden art and 5G mobile edge computing(MEC) technology that will provide visitors with a new experience of 360-degree panoramic UHD video VR live broadcasting, 5G+VR live broadcasting, and 5G cloud gaming.

The 360-degree panoramic UHD VR live broadcasting uses cameras on UAVs and ground systems to deliver impressive 360-degree panoramic views of the expo. Due to the restricted bandwidth and long latency, VR may cause people to feel dizzy when playing it.

In addition, VR has high requirements on graphics rendering so that servers need to be deployed locally to provide sufficient computing and rendering capabilities. The cloud service processing platform deployed at the network edge is used to achieve high rendering and low latency, in combination with 5G-native ultra-high bandwidth and MEC. The platform processes video images and UHD videos at a high speed to greatly reduce the latency in sending videos back to screens and VR head-mounted displays (HMDs), delivering an immersive panoramic experience for visitors and viewers anytime, anywhere.

Gamers often encounter game lag or freezing when playing traditional games. The 5G cloud gaming deployed in the telecom pavilion at the expo makes full use of 5G MEC to distribute data traffic to the local nodes of the cloud gaming platform for traffic processing and termination, delivering a new gaming experience from the virtual local area network with ultra-low latency and ultra-high bandwidth.

The Beijing Expo leverages ultra-high bandwidth and ultra-low latency of 5G and MEC to deliver a visual experience to visitors that embodies the perfect combination of culture, tourism, and 5G. MEC widely applies to many fields and has a promising future for gaming, health care, education, energy, manufacturing, and other fields. MEC will be a key for digital transformation of carriers.

China Telecom has established long-term cooperation with Huawei in MEC innovation and R&D to jointly promote the development of the MEC industry, broaden the industry ecosystem, and unleash the technology’s business value.