Industry 4.0 can is thrust forward with 5G
THE speed and versatility of 5G will propel the advancements of Industry 4.0.
This is the general sentiment at the Asia-Pacific (APAC) 5G Industry Forum (5GIF) held virtually online recently. Themed “5G inspiring new value accelerating Industry 4.0”, urged for ecosystem cooperation and joint innovation to support industry digitalization.
Co-hosted by Huawei Technologies, it had over 800 registered participants from over 30 countries representing governments, telecom operators, academia, ICT, and other vertical industry players from the Asia Pacific region.
Technology partners and industry business owners went on stage to share thoughts and experiences as well as explore how to develop a sustainable 5G partner ecosystem. This ecosystem would, in turn, create higher contributions and rapidly enable businesses in the Asia Pacific region to expand digitally. Speakers from different industries and countries from China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand.
One highlight is the effect of 5G on the global economy–shaping businesses not by the technology but by the need, this affects business growth which in turn enhances commercial and digital service acceleration.
“But there still have many challenges to overcome, 5G requires not only innovators but also brave practitioners to drive the development. In Thailand, Siriraj Hospital is a good example, they are facing many difficulties to transform traditional processes, but the hospital has finally started to use 5G services for remote patient monitoring, connected ambulances, and unmanned medicine vehicles to provide higher quality of medication service to their patients,” Dennis Xiao, President of Huawei Technologies Asia Pacific Region elaborated in his opening remarks.
5G enables technologies like automated driving, real-time medical operations using robots, execution of dangerous jobs like handling radioactive materials or treacherous construction tasks because of its low latency, expansive bandwidth that is able to handle huge packets of data, and transmitting and receiving data in real-time.
Dustin Kehoe, APAC & ME Service Director at Global Data, mentioned that more than 15,000 ASEAN enterprises are spending over $246 billion for current ICT transformation, industries are starting to use 5G in manufacturing, oil and gas, healthcare, and other campus-based networks.
“ASEAN countries are very committed to enlarge industrial manpower through variety skill-sets and technologies talent training,” Kehoe said.
“5GtoB will bring great benefit to the global economy and Huawei proposes a 1+N 5G target network to fulfill the requirements of video backhaul, machine vision, remote control and real-time positioning,” Daisy Zhu, Vice President of Wireless Marketing at Huawei said as she shared several examples of automation in manufacturing, airports and shipping ports highlighting 5G’s role in providing greater bandwidth, lower latency, and positioning.
Two discussion panels–one from the academe and the technology industry, and a second one for an exchange of information–made up the forum.
The first one with panelists from universities, business consultants, governments, and telecom operators came up with common views ford industry standards, public policies and regulation with economic benefits to capitalize on creating growth, improving quality and maximizing efficiencies in product lines.
The second-panel session discussed the challenges and opportunities of 5G eco-systems cooperation. Huawei and operators have already established lots of IoT-based partnerships and built a cooperation framework in the past few years, which helped build a faster local ecosystem. Going forward means to explore more possible business use cases to create new commercial value, together with innovators, start-ups, and solutions providers to offer 5G enabled vertical industry solutions to accelerate industry digitalization.
The rapid deployment of 5G across Asia Pacific has paved the way for new innovations in vertical industries. Continued ICT investment and cooperation will better serve the businesses of the region, accelerate industry digital transformation, and develop the local partner ecosystems necessary for inspiring new value and accelerating industry 4.0.
Read the GSMA APAC Digital Societies Report 2020 here.
