SHENZHEN – In a move rather reminiscent of T-Mobile’s Binge On Un-carrier move, Huawei executives on Monday laid out a vision of the future in which video services are not just an intrinsic part of telecommunications services but also a standard feature.
“To us, video should be positioned as a basic service for operators,” Huawei rotating CEO Eric Xu said in his keynote presentation.
According to figures presented by Huawei, video is already the dominant content type on many mobile networks, accounting for more than 50 percent of all traffic. In the coming years, that figure is expected to grow to more than 80 percent as video becomes a more integral part of life with the rise of VR and mobile video, Huawei said.
Huawei executives said telecommunications companies would have to make three major adjustments in order to support video as a basic service, including overhauling their ecosystems to become more open and collaborative and allow for more users, tweaking their business strategy to be more video focused and measuring the consumer experience through the company’s network architecture and video platform.
Huawei said there are three different strategies telecommunications companies can take in delivering video as a service. The first is to focus on media and entertainment companies, as AT&T has done with DirecTV. The second is using video for business innovation thought platform-based companies. The third is using video as a basic service to improve network value.
The company also offered up the idea of converged video – that is, video from the categories of entertainment, communications and industry sectors like telemedicine – on a single network.
But much of Huawei’s vision relies on a future of “full cloudification.” According to Xu, cloudification will include the transformation of all aspects of the industry, including equipment, networks, services and operations.
While Huawei said it will be working to “cloudify” all of its products and services over the next few years, executives said telecommunications companies must also do their part by transitioning their equipment, network services and operations to the cloud.
As they make the shift, Xu said video is just one of four services Huawei believes telecommunications companies are ideally positioned to offer, alongside Voice over IP services, Internet of Things services, and SaaS, PaaS and IaaS.
