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AI-Powered Low-Altitude Networking: Unlocking New B2B Growth for Carriers

China Mobile is turning low-altitude networking into a full-stack B2B service engine, powered by 5G-A integrated sensing, AI, and its "Four Drives, Two Wings" architecture.

The global ICT landscape is undergoing a profound shift. Traditional pipe models can no longer support the strategic ambitions of digital and intelligent transformation. Carriers are moving fast from being connectivity providers to key partners in digital and intelligent advancements across industries, driving the deep integration of AI with pervasive networks, computing cloud and network, and beyond. As they search for a second growth curve, the low-altitude economy — sitting at the intersection of technology, public welfare, and industry — has emerged as a promising new frontier for carriers to empower the real economy.

The low-altitude economy is transitioning from pilot exploration to large-scale, systematic growth. Central to this shift is low-altitude intelligent networking, the backbone of low-altitude infrastructure. The network integrates air-ground communications, and fuses communication, navigation, sensing, and management systems to serve all low-altitude domains. Its goal is to enhance airspace safety and efficiency through visualized, connected, accessible, and manageable services.

Trend insights: Strategic convergence of the low-altitude economy and carriers' B2B services

• The low-altitude economy is taking off, making digital infrastructure a necessity

  The low-altitude economy is a composite industry that integrates digital technologies with low-altitude space. Major economies around the world have incorporated the low-altitude economy into their national industrial strategies. For example, the U.S. continues to streamline the certification process for electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL), Europe has built the U-space system for collaborative operations in low-altitude airspace, and many countries in Asia-Pacific have implemented regulatory sandbox pilots. Under the guidance of policies such as the Interim Regulations for Managing UAV Flight, and the Low-Altitude Economy Standards System Construction Guide, China has formed a four-pronged development pattern, featuring policy guidance, technological breakthroughs, scenario expansion, and capital support.

  With the surge in high-density, high-frequency, cross-regional, and multi-operator flight activities, the pain points of traditional communications — fragmented coverage, inadequate navigation precision, obsolete regulatory methods, and weak security — have become increasingly pronounced. Relying solely on conventional communication technologies and manual supervision can no longer meet demand. Consequently, purpose-built intelligent low-altitude networking has become the prerequisite for advancing the low-altitude economy.

• AI + Low-altitude intelligent networking, reshaping B2B service models

  In traditional B2B services, carriers focus on providing basic communication connectivity, with a single revenue model and limited value contribution. By integrating AI with low-altitude intelligent networking, carriers can harness mobile communication networks, distributed computing power, and trusted service qualifications to achieve three pivotal changes in service models, breaking free from the limitations of conventional approaches.

  First, intelligent network upgrade. By leveraging AI-enabled network capabilities such as 5G-A integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), intelligent beamforming, and dynamic interference coordination, carriers can effectively address the challenges of coverage holes and signal fluctuations in low-altitude communication. Next, intelligent upgrade of operations and supervision. By using AI algorithms to enable intelligent prediction of airspace traffic, dynamic planning of flight paths, autonomous scheduling of flight operations, precise identification of anomalies, and proactive risk warning, carriers can significantly improve the efficiency of low-altitude airspace operations. Lastly, intelligent upgrade of services. This shifts carriers' B2B services from standardized connectivity supply to scenario-based, operable digital and intelligent services. By building a full-stack solution that integrates infrastructure construction, platform operations, application enablement, and security assurance, carriers can fundamentally transform from selling bandwidth to selling capabilities, services, and value, comprehensively improving the added value and profitability of B2B services.

Policy guidance: Prioritizing existing resources and building a robust communication support framework

• Core orientation: Revitalizing existing resources, co-constructing and sharing platforms, and ensuring strict compliance

  The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and four other departments jointly released the Implementation Opinions on Strengthening the Capability Building of the Information and Communications Industry to Support the Development of Low-altitude Infrastructure. The document clearly defines the pillar role that the information and communications industry plays in the development of low-altitude infrastructure. The core orientation of the policy is very clear: Revitalizing existing resources, co-constructing and sharing platforms, and ensuring strict compliance. For carriers, this means fully relying on existing mature mobile communications network infrastructure, such as 5G and 5G-A, to quickly transform towers, computing equipment rooms, and optical fiber networks across the country into low-altitude service capabilities. This gives carriers a natural first-mover advantage in deploying low-altitude services with low costs and high efficiency. The policy explicitly places communication support in the scope of "strict compliance". This means that if a future low-altitude aircraft is not connected to the network-linked system, it will be like a car without a license plate and navigation system, and cannot legally take off.

• Suggestions: Policy compliance, efficient regulations, and technical collaboration

  To truly support the low-altitude economy, carriers need to build a comprehensive system encompassing policy compliance, efficient regulations, and technical collaboration: First, safety regulations and technological advancements must proceed hand-in-hand. Carriers need to promptly implement the "one device, one code, one number" identification system to tightly link each aircraft, SIM card, and carrier account. They must also actively engage in identity verification, communication binding, and tracking of low-altitude devices, enabling full lifecycle traceability and closed-loop management. This will elevate carriers from mere pipeline providers to strategic partners in low-altitude economic development. Next, carriers can spearhead the ongoing evolution of technology and equipment, bridging the gap between communication and radar systems, and integrating networks with devices. The future lies in the multidimensional fusion of ground mobile communication, satellite communication, and low-altitude communication, navigation, and monitoring. This integration will transform base stations into real-time detection centers for drone positions, speeds, and forms, ensuring seamless network mobility and ubiquitous sensing.

Core strategy: Leveraging resource and technical advantages to develop a unique competitive edge

Amid the development wave of the low-altitude economy, top-level policy guidance, and real industry pain points, China Mobile is seizing the opportunity, leveraging its core resources and advanced technology to break through development bottlenecks, align with top-tier policies, and forge a unique competitive edge in the market.

Figure 1: The "Four Drives, Two Wings" architecture for low-altitude intelligent networking

• Core architecture: "Four Drives, Two Wings" strengthen the foundation of low-altitude intelligent networking

  China Mobile has created a "Four Drives, Two Wings" architecture for low-altitude intelligent networking (as shown in Figure 1). This innovative structure leverages four core "drives" to bolster foundational capabilities and two "wings" to safeguard industry security, creating a comprehensive, closed-loop, and scalable system.

  The four core "drives" form the backbone of the architecture, integrating the terminal, network, platform, and application layers to create a robust, full-chain capability system. At the terminal layer, China Mobile leverages advanced communication and positioning modules, dedicated SIM cards, and SDKs to develop a full-chain and diversified terminal product matrix, ensuring trusted access and streamlined lifecycle management. The network layer drives innovation by establishing extensive low-altitude communication, high-precision navigation, and 5G-A ISAC networks, guaranteeing reliable connectivity, precise location and navigation, and real-time situational awareness. The platform layer offers a versatile low-altitude service hub that combines regulatory oversight with industry support, enhancing efficiency across sectors. Finally, the application layer targets key low-altitude economic scenarios like logistics, rescue, and inspection. By identifying shared requirements, China Mobile develops standard solutions and fosters a scalable B2B service model.

  The two "wings" of protection offer architectural support, safeguarding the operations and growth of low-altitude intelligent networking. The AI enablement wing, harnessing China Mobile's extensive computing network, foundation model technology, and industry algorithms, seamlessly integrates AI throughout low-altitude intelligent networking. This enables accurate target recognition, intelligent airspace traffic forecasting, dynamic flight path planning, autonomous operations, and effective anomaly management, elevating the intelligence of low-altitude operations. The security wing drives all-domain, multidimensional protection by constructing a comprehensive system for trusted terminal identification, secure communications, safe platform access, and application data protection, ensuring that every step of the low-altitude flight process is manageable, controlled, and traceable.

• Core advantages: Four core capabilities build industry competitiveness

  In the development of the low-altitude economy, China Mobile has formed four irreplaceable core advantages based on its resources and technological expertise.

  First, network resource advantage. China Mobile boasts the world's largest 5G/5G-A network and numerous tower sites. By reusing existing facilities for cost-effective reform, China Mobile can support both high-density flights under 300 meters and wide-area flights over 600 meters. The company sets industry standards in network coverage and construction speed.

  Second, regulatory compliance. Guided by China's national policy, China Mobile designed the "four-in-one" low-altitude networking supervision solution, seamlessly integrating pilots, drones, SIM cards, and control devices. This ensures lifecycle identification and closed-loop management of low-altitude aircraft, fully compliant with both government and industry regulations.

  Third, digital and intelligent advantages. Harnessing its comprehensive computing prowess and deep industry expertise, China Mobile has revolutionized conventional detection with AI-driven multi-modal technology. This innovation crafts an all-encompassing, all-weather, and highly accurate low-altitude security network, fortifying operational safety.

  Fourth, ecosystem collaboration. China Mobile has taken the lead in integrating upstream and downstream resources of the industry chain, and collaborating with equipment vendors, terminal enterprises, research institutes, industry customers, and local governments to advance technological standards, breakthroughs in core technologies, testing and verification optimization, and business implementation and operations. This collaboration fosters a cohesive development framework and sustainable industry ecosystem.

Practical cases: China Mobile and Huawei dive into low-altitude economy

China Mobile and Huawei have deepened their collaboration in the low-altitude domain. At its core are two technologies: 5G-A integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), and 5G-A + AI computing-network convergence. Together, they form a cloud-edge-device collaborative digital foundation for low-altitude operations. This foundation has been deployed across multiple pilot or commercial projects in Anhui, Guangdong, Henan, and other provinces in China, driving the large-scale application of "5G-A × AI" technology in scenarios such as low-altitude inspection, low-altitude security, logistics and delivery, and emergency rescue.

Multi-modal fusion for low-altitude monitoring and safety in Hefei: In Hefei, China Mobile followed national standards to coordinate the deployment of communication, navigation, monitoring, meteorological, and countermeasure infrastructure, creating a multi-modal fusion system for detection and countermeasures. By combining 5G-A with existing technologies — low-speed and small-target radar, electro-optical detection, and radio-based detection — the system actively identifies non-cooperative targets and supports countermeasure decision-making. The project now covers all key areas and critical low-altitude corridors across Hefei, ensuring safe and efficient operations for logistics, passenger transport, public services, and other typical low-altitude applications.

5G-enabled smart drone dispatch in Shenzhen: In the city governance domain, China Mobile helped the Public Security Bureau of Shenzhen build a 5G-enabled drone command and dispatch platform that unifies all drone resources under centralized management. Powered by the China Mobile Lingyun platform, the system breaks through beyond visual line-of-sight (BVLOS) limitations and, by combining 5G with smart drone hangar technology, enables autonomous drone flights. This pushes routine patrol and inspection toward fully unmanned operations. As the first city-level pilot for unified 5G management of city governance drones, the platform has slashed equipment launch time to just three minutes and cut pilot costs by 50%, setting a benchmark for smarter urban governance and demonstrating the transformative value of technology-empowered public services.

Multi-modal fusion for low-altitude airspace protection by Nanyang Jiangying Airport: In the airport security domain, Nanyang Jiangying Airport deployed the multi-modal fusion sensing capabilities of the China Mobile Lingyun low-altitude management platform. The system combines 5G-A ISAC with radio, electro-optical, radar, and AI technologies, and integrates bird-dispersal equipment and waterlogging monitoring systems. Through a unified airport-wide situational map, it brings together all airport equipment, surrounding airspace intelligence, and device data onto a single pane of glass. This enables precise monitoring of two major safety risks: airborne "landmines" — drones, balloons, and bird flocks intruding into the airspace — and runway "killers" — waterlogging and foreign object debris (FOD).

Future outlook: AI drives foundation iteration and upgrades, opening up a blue ocean for B2B

Looking ahead, AI technologies will play an increasingly prominent role. China Mobile will focus on three core areas to propel low-altitude intelligent networking forward:

• At the technology level, China Mobile will continue to advance the evolution of network technology, driving the upgrade from 5G-A to 6G. By merging communication, navigation, sensing, and computing, China Mobile will push beyond technological boundaries, and build a highly autonomous, resilient, and fully integrated low-altitude intelligent network.
• At the scenario level, China Mobile will drive the full-scale upgrade of low-altitude applications, expanding from basic cargo transport and inspections to high-value sectors like passenger travel, urban air mobility, low-altitude cultural tours, and high-end logistics. China Mobile's reach will extend from peripheral areas like suburbs and campuses into city centers and across all airspace. Moreover, the company will evolve from isolated scenarios to integrated and collaborative ones, relentlessly uncovering new B2B opportunities.
• At the business level, China Mobile will continuously refine business models, transcending traditional project-based services to embrace diverse, sustainable options like foundation leasing, platform services, application subscriptions, and data operations. This shift will transform China Mobile's major revenue source from one-time payment to ongoing service income, fueling a new growth trajectory for its B2B offerings.

The low-altitude domain is not merely an extension of physical space, but a whole new dimension of digital transformation. China Mobile will bolster industries with advanced digital and intelligent infrastructure and drive innovation through cutting-edge technology. On its journey toward high-quality growth in the low-altitude economy, China Mobile will unlock new productivity and partner with all parties across the industry chain to shape a vibrant digital future in three-dimensional space.

China Unicom's Innovations and Practices in Industrial Intelligence

China Unicom builds on its connectivity strength with a full-stack industrial AI solution that drives real-world manufacturing transformation.

In recent years, next-generation technologies like AI have accelerated the intelligent transformation of the industrial ICT sector. In China’s 15th Five-Year Plan, policies such as AI + industrial Internet and AI + manufacturing are set to propel AI deeper into the heart of industrial production. As both a builder of China's information infrastructure and an enabler of industrial development, China Unicom has analyzed the core challenges in intelligent transformation, including data processing, task execution, and robotic decision-making. Based on these insights, China Unicom has developed a full-stack solution that spans data governance, agent networks, and embodied AI.

The three phases of China Unicom's industrial intelligence

China Unicom's industrial journey unfolded in three phases: first, connecting everything with 5G; then, sensing through data and vision; and now, cognizing with AI and agents.

Since 2018, the large-scale 5G technology adoption has been fundamentally changing networking. Through its 5G private networks, China Unicom has delivered low-latency, high-bandwidth connectivity to virtually every aspect of industrial operations. Production lines are now capable of advanced visual sensing and identification. Mobile terminals have freed production lines from traditional constraints. Autonomous guided vehicles (AGVs), AR glasses that merge the virtual and real worlds, and centrally controlled workstations can be flexibly reconfigured to form new flexible production lines. To date, over 9,500 5G-powered production facilities have been established in China, spanning industries from manufacturing and mining to ports and power plants. These smart facilities are also extending to other markets, like Thailand (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Midea's 5G factory in Chon Buri, Thailand

In 2022, the focus of digital transformation shifted to data-driven development. China Unicom launched the Unilink Industrial Internet Platform, centered on IoT and big data, to carry the device and management data of industrial enterprises. This platform offers protocol parsing and structured modeling services, which enhances system interoperability by allowing upper-layer applications to access data securely without having to navigate the complexities of underlying devices and systems. Unilink has been included in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's (MIIT's) Cross-industry and Cross-domain Industrial Internet Platform List for three years. It rose from 29th in the rankings to 9th in 2024, and entered the top 6 in 2025.

In 2024, the AI boom really started to take off. What truly drives users to choose AI is not parameters or compute power, but how seamlessly it integrates into existing production scenarios. The forms of intelligence are evolving into vertical foundation models that can understand professional data and generate accurate answers, agents that automate tasks, and embodied AI robots that enable human-machine collaboration. Building an open industrial intelligence ecosystem on top of its networking and digitization foundation is the goal of the Unilink platform evolution.

The three core pain points of industrial intelligence

Despite its promising prospects, industrial intelligence still faces three major challenges in practical implementation in factories, mines, and ports.

The first challenge is the semantic gap in data. The foundation model needs to understand a vast amount of proprietary, highly specialized enterprise data and ensure that generated content strictly adheres to industry specifications, safety standards, and process requirements. Otherwise, intelligence would remain at the Q&A level and be unable to guide decision-making.

The second challenge is task breakdown and execution. Conversational capabilities alone are insufficient. The foundation model needs to break down user intentions into a series of executable tasks, and the operating system needs to invoke different agents and enterprise applications to complete these tasks automatically.

The final challenge is the lack of generalization in robots. Traditional robots lack perception, while new humanoid and quadrupedal robots have insufficient generalization. They lack the autonomous reasoning and decision-making needed for industrial settings. The key to full-scale intelligence is enabling embodied intelligent robots to not only perform tasks, but work in close collaboration with humans and other automated systems.

China Unicom details three solutions for industrial intelligence

To tackle these challenges, China Unicom has detailed three technical approaches, based on data, collaboration, and terminals.

First, an AI-ready data governance system: Enterprise data is multimodal. It includes device status data (temperature, pressure, current, rotational speed, etc.), production data (customer, order, product, material information, etc.), diverse system-generated data (file, program code, API, process, etc.), and unstructured data (image, audio, video, paper document, etc.). China Unicom has introduced its own data ontology to enable foundation models and agents to understand and reference this data.

Instead of simply collecting data, China Unicom uses semantic modeling and knowledge graphs to extract and transform multimodal data into semantic information and knowledge. Working with industry customers, China Unicom aligns the semantics of data in specific settings to ensure that relationships across different dimensions are unified in a single vector space. This approach enables foundation models to make informed decisions grounded in industry common sense, not just probabilistic guesses.

China Unicom's equipment team partnered with tech companies to create a specialized model for the production of China's C919 large aircraft. This project demonstrated significantly improved decision-making precision for advanced manufacturing. In the fashion sector, China Unicom developed a data-driven fabric performance predictor for Shanghai Challenge Textile that greatly reduced the time to market for new materials.

Second, enterprise-level Internet of agents (IoA): The number of job-specific and task-specific agents is growing rapidly. Traditional IP address-centric and static rule-based security models are insufficient for dynamic agent migration, autonomous decision-making, and efficient collaboration. To tackle this issue, China Unicom has proposed the enterprise-ready IoA, a technology system akin to the traditional Internet and intranet but fully AI-native and independent.

First, addressing is evolving from traditional location-based addressing to identity-based addressing. In conventional networks, servers are located using IP addresses. In the IoA, system routing matches agents directly by their identities, types, and permissions, eliminating reliance on destination IP addresses.

Second, security is transitioning from perimeter protection to intrinsic security. Traditional models are like fortresses, mainly defending against external threats. In the IoA, however, each agent can become an entry point or target for attacks, making a comprehensive security mechanism covering the entire network essential. This mechanism must include:

• Continuous identity-based authentication and dynamic authorization for each agent interaction request.
• Dynamic adjustment of access permissions for agents based on their identities and real-time risk assessments (such as behavioral anomalies and environmental changes), enforcing the principle of least privilege to prevent permission abuse.
• A full-link verifiable trust system covering the hardware execution environment (such as TEE), code integrity, and identity credentials. This establishes a trusted data space and ensures that agents' actions match their claims and are trustworthy.
• Recording key agent operations, decision-making chains, and communication content in a tamper-proof audit ledger, forming a complete evidence chain for backtracking and accountability.

At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2026, China Unicom launched UniClaw, an AI-native communication service and the latest addition to the Yuanjing Wanwu intelligent agent platform. It transforms traditional communications like phone calls and SMS into entry points for executing agent commands (Figure 2). At a March 2026 event in Huangpu District, Guangzhou, China Unicom presented its full-stack AI + New Industrialization Solution. This solution's ClawdSecbot security system mitigates risks such as permission miscontrol and plugin poisoning in OpenClaw deployment, ensuring secure AI for manufacturing enterprises.

Figure 2: China Unicom launching UniClaw

The original IP address-based routing network will be upgraded to an intelligent network for agent interconnection based on intent understanding, built-in security authentication, and compute-network collaboration. This will enable us to build an open ecosystem of industrial intelligence on existing network and digital foundations.

This transformation means compute-network collaboration is no longer just about moving computing power closer to data, but evolving into a super neural network that understands intent, autonomously schedules agents, and comes with built-in security features.

Building an open industrial intelligence ecosystem is the ultimate goal of compute-network collaboration in practice. At China Unicom Shandong, for example, China Unicom and Huawei have successfully deployed the autonomous network change and security agent. Using foundation model deep learning, it enables online simulation and risk assessment of network configuration changes. This transforms complex tasks that previously required manual checks into automated closed-loop agent operations, providing a solid underlying foundation for the open industrial intelligence ecosystem.

Third, an embodied intelligent brain operating across terminals: Previously, the Unilink platform enabled interoperability between applications and devices through protocol parsing and device models. Now, China Unicom has upgraded the platform to enable seamless interactions between robots (both traditional and embodied AI) and the embedded intelligent brain. This upgraded platform offers end-to-end services for embodied AI.

First, the platform accurately captures motion data. This involves deploying optical, inertial, and visual sensors to record the actions of human experts in fields like welding, material handling, and quality inspection. In the subsequent data adaptation and format conversion processes, the system uses dedicated algorithms to adapt captured joint space data to robot description files (such as URDF), bridging the gap from how humans do it to how robots do it.

In the model training phase, training samples are expanded to address the long-tail problem. Synthetic data of generalized actions is generated from real motion capture data and digital twin technology. A vision-language-action (VLA) embodied AI model is trained on this data to equip robots with visual sensing, language understanding, and decision-making abilities. In the virtual-to-real debugging phase, the trained model is deployed on robots using a high-bandwidth, low-latency 5G network. The robots achieve autonomous operations through reinforcement learning and fine-tuning from simulation to reality (Figure 3). The platform provides comprehensive technical support for robots using 5G network connectivity, sensory abilities (visual and auditory), and customized small model services.

Figure 3: CCTV, China's leading broadcaster, reports on the virtual-to-real training field of China Unicom's industrial embodied AI robots

China Unicom's exploration and practices in industrial intelligence spans from 5G private networks to smart factories, from industrial Internet platforms to edge-AI integration in core production — each step deepening our industrial intelligence capabilities. Going forward, we will strengthen our digital infrastructure; deepen the application of AI + manufacturing; and collaborate with industry partners across the value chain — including manufacturers, equipment suppliers, and model providers — to build an open, collaborative, and secure industrial intelligence ecosystem. This will transform industrial intelligence from isolated pilots to coordinated, widespread adoption and contribute to the growth of the manufacturing sector.

5G CCTV: Solving the Last-Mile Challenge for Video IoT

China Mobile Inner Mongolia and Huawei use 5G-A and RedCap for urban-rural video access — simple deployment, HD backhaul, and cost-effective, deterministic IoVT.

The Internet of Video Things (IoVT) is more than just image capture. It is a sensing system for public safety and a digital foundation for industry upgrades. Using its robust network infrastructure, China Mobile has consistently pushed the boundaries of IoVT, applying it to public safety, governance, and industrial intelligent transformation, and amassed a wealth of real-world expertise in the process. Yet, despite these advancements, two significant hurdles remain: first, the prohibitive costs and lengthy deployment times for optical fiber in remote regions, and second, the complex urban settings that complicate cabling and limit space, hindering governance solutions.

How do we address the last-mile challenge in IoVT access? How can we ensure high-quality IoVT coverage in urban and rural settings? China Mobile Inner Mongolia, partnering with Huawei, tackled this issue head-on in the all-domain IoVT project in Tumed Left Banner and the New Year's Eve support project in Hohhot. Integrating 5G-A, RedCap (lightweight 5G), and IoVT, we delivered an economical and groundbreaking solution.

Building a digital backbone for county-level security through wide-area video networking

China Mobile Inner Mongolia relentlessly pursues digital innovation to tackle last-mile challenges in rural public services and community management across vast regions. In September 2025, the carrier partnered with Huawei and the Governance Service and Data Management bureau of Tumed Left Banner in Hohhot to launch a pioneering IoVT initiative, contributing to Hohhot's smart city development. This collaboration established a top-level design centered on the synergy of the cloud, network, and devices, targeting critical sectors like flood control, agriculture, forestry, and urban management. The project created a robust 5G-A IoVT framework for seamless connectivity, security, and reliability. It lays a strong digital foundation for the region's socioeconomic development.

Harnessing its strengths in networks, technology, and services, as well as its deep understanding of local public service and industry needs, China Mobile Inner Mongolia customized standard products to tailor an end-to-end IoVT solution for Tumed Left Banner. This solution adapted fiber optic deployment to the region's extensive water systems and vast farmlands. Using China Mobile's high-quality 700 MHz low-frequency and 2.6 GHz large-capacity dual-band network, the solution ensures continuous coverage across critical water areas (rivers, lakes, reservoirs, etc.), agricultural and forestry zones, and transportation hubs. The peripheral system uses the '5G DTU + camera' to ensure comprehensive coverage. In remote areas where traditional power is limited or costly, the solution additionally deploys a 'PV + energy storage' solar power supply system.

This innovative deployment method that eliminates trenching and cable burying has supercharged efficiency. It slashed the construction time for the Tumed Left Banner project from four months to under one, safeguarding lives and property against floods. Additionally, it cuts costs by 40% to 90% by eliminating the need for heavy machinery.

Now, Tumed Left Banner has deployed hundreds of high-definition cameras, each generating nearly 800 GB of monthly upstream traffic. Average cell bandwidth utilization has jumped from 12% to 27%, a 15% increase, with rates in high-density areas soaring to 41%.

The high uplink bandwidth of 5G-A enables stable, real-time transmission of HD video feeds back to the platform, where integrated AI analysis delivers remote, real-time dynamic monitoring and situational alerts for critical nodes. This has significantly improved the efficiency and accuracy of Tumed Left Banner's flood control, water management, farm and forest fire prevention, and emergency response.

The project clearly demonstrates the potential of 5G IoVT technology for bridging the digital divide in remote regions and modernizing county-level governance. The model's effectiveness was validated by the all-domain IoVT project in Qingshuihe County. In this area, which is even more remote and challenging than Tumed Left Banner, traditional optical fiber deployment costs can soar into tens or even hundreds of thousands of RMB. The project innovatively implemented the "PV + 5G RedCap" solution to ensure network quality while significantly cutting deployment costs. This innovative approach offers a highly efficient and cost-effective pathway for IoVT adoption in remote regions.

Testing assurance capabilities in urban areas under extreme loads

If rural areas challenge IoVT with coverage breadth, urban areas test it with penetration depth. Urban areas are characterized by high population density, rampant network interference, and large numbers of concurrent mobile services. This results in heavy network pressure, which makes stability and real-time data backhaul a major challenge for China Mobile Inner Mongolia. The carrier's capabilities were put to the test during the New Year's Eve event at Hohhot's Xinhua Square in 2026.

Located in Hohhot's city center, Xinhua Square drew over 25,900 revelers on New Year's Eve 2026. This generated 1,502 GB of network traffic and 35,437 ERLs of call volume. Under these kinds of heavy loads, traditional video backhaul often falters, leading to lag and disconnections. China Mobile Inner Mongolia and Huawei broke ground by deploying the first WAN 5G RedCap IoVT deterministic assurance solution on a live network emergency communication vehicle at Xinhua Square. This marked a new course for real-time security and network assurance at crowded major events.

This solution uses RedCap multi-BWP (Bandwidth Part) intelligent selection technology to allocate high-priority logical slices for IoVT services, building strong assurance in high-density settings. The mobile emergency communication vehicle at Xinhua Square was equipped with 2K and 1080p cameras. Even during peak hours, video data streams were transmitted to the mobile IoVT management platform (powered by the Huiyan platform) with stability, clarity, and minimal latency (Figure 1).

Figure 1: Remote retrieval of HD footage from the 2026 New Year's Eve celebration in Hohhot via the video management platform

Freed from the constraints of conventional fiber optic installation, the live network was rolled out in just 30 minutes. Real-time data streaming to China Mobile's mobile IoVT management platform enabled HD visuals for AI-powered, millisecond-accurate analysis of crowd density and distribution. With this instant feedback, the network assurance center can invoke onsite images and AI data analysis results, integrate them with critical network and load metrics in high-traffic areas, and work alongside the communication assurance team to resolve incidents quickly. Dynamic parameter adjustments, load balancing, and rapid fault resolution helped achieve precise network resource scheduling and fast closed-loop communication assurance (Figure 2).

Figure 2: China Mobile Hohhot and Huawei supported the New Year's Eve event in 2026 using the 5G RedCap IoVT solution

Forging a future through closer IoVT collaboration

From the seamless rollout of the all-domain IoVT project in Tumed Left Banner to the flawless New Year's Eve event support at Xinhua Square, the strategic partnership between China Mobile Inner Mongolia and Huawei has showcased the adaptability of 5G IoVT technology to different urban and rural settings. It has also generated a wealth of valuable experience for the IoVT sector, providing benchmarks for routine governance and crisis management.

Moving forward, China Mobile Inner Mongolia will drive the growth of the IoVT industry ecosystem with two pivotal strategies:

The first strategy is to expand all-domain IoVT, extend sensing boundaries, and achieve in-depth coverage across diverse settings.

Using China Mobile's 700 MHz network, we will continue to extend IoVT coverage from traditional public safety to more industry applications. For wide-area governance, we will enhance IoVT applications in forest and grassland fire prevention, water conservation, road traffic, and urban management, creating an all-encompassing sensing network spanning vast urban and rural areas. For industrial production, we will advance IoVT for safe production and remote maintenance in chemical plants, smart mines, and wind farms. This will enhance the safety and operational integrity of people, equipment, and environments. By serving both public and industrial needs, IoVT will become a trusted foundation for governance and industrial resilience.

The second strategy is to activate the IoVT ecosystem, integrate AI capabilities, and truly empower industries.

The value of IoVT lies in its applications, and the depth of those applications depends on the level of intelligence. We are using Huawei's AI and vision models to transform video from mere recording to thinking. In critical fields like agriculture, forestry, water management, transportation, and urban governance, we will pinpoint sector-specific algorithmic needs to craft tailored intelligent solutions — from wildfire detection and river flood monitoring to parking violation alerts and urban service area management. This will allow IoVT to go beyond just "seeing" — to understanding, judging, and responding with speed and accuracy. By deeply integrating algorithms with real-world scenarios, we will turn IoVT into a universal enabler of digital transformation across industries — delivering truly intelligent sensing for every domain.

We are confident that through close collaboration with strategic partners like Huawei, we can drive sustained, high-quality growth for the IoVT industry — from Inner Mongolia's vast grasslands to markets beyond.

Industrial Private Network Agent: Powering B2B Growth with AI-Enhanced Connectivity

Huawei and carriers are building an industrial private network agent, layering AI onto connectivity so the network becomes a true enabler of production.

Over the past year, the major trend we have observed in our interactions with global carriers is the pivoting of enterprise customers from basic physical metrics like bandwidth and latency to intelligent requirements like AI inference support, seamless data integration, and collaboration with intelligent agents. This shift underscores the transformation of carriers' B2B value propositions from simple transmission to intelligent collaboration. Private networks are transforming from mere transmission pipes into trusted intelligent production partners.

This evolution is part of the wider industry trend of digital and intelligent transformation. According to GSMA, by 2030, the average ROI for enterprise digital transformation will hit 200%, with a payback period of around 4.5 years. Investments will largely focus on AI and 5G. Major economies are setting policies and targets for the integration of AI with sectors like communications and manufacturing. Technologically, we are at a pivotal juncture. The rollout of 5G-A is accelerating, enabling new paradigms like integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) and passive IoT. These capabilities allow networks to connect to massive numbers of labels and really sense the physical world. On the AI front, foundational models are becoming more advanced, and agents are evolving from perception and cognition to autonomous decision-making and execution. Private networks are unlocking new growth avenues as smart technology is integrated into telecommunications. The convergence of market trends, policy support, and technological advancements signals a new chapter for carrier B2B business.

Huawei's Cloud Core Network Product Line has prioritized the integration of AI and private networks. Collaborating with carriers and industry partners, Huawei delivers practical solutions for the government, education, healthcare, and manufacturing sectors. The industrial private network agent exemplifies this approach in the manufacturing industry.

Industry trend: What does an AI-era private network look like for customers?

Enterprises have diverse needs for AI deployment on private networks. Large enterprises with strong digital foundations have established their own AI data centers, industry foundation models, and agent platforms. Their aim is to seamlessly integrate private networks into their existing AI systems. For this, they need schedulable capabilities and readable network status. Their intelligent agents need to be able to access terminal service status directly and invoke private network capabilities. 5G private networks need to be fully integrated into enterprise AI workflows, rather than operated as black boxes. Medium-sized enterprises need a more lightweight approach. With their smaller business scale, building AI platforms in-house would likely have low ROI. Public cloud agent services are expensive and require data transfer outside the private network. These enterprises want carriers to offer out-of-the-box, one-stop services that bundle private networks, intelligent offices, and automated Q&A, enabling affordable and comprehensive smart upgrades for office and manufacturing environments.

Private networks need to be aligned with these needs. Enterprises need to interact with private networks using AI-based methods like natural language and tokens. Service systems and agents should be able to invoke network resources directly, rather than through passive API responses. Beyond connection and positioning, private networks must be able to handle sensing, inference, and data processing. Inference computing power is moved to production sites to enable local data processing within the private network. Private networks will connect an increasing variety of terminals on the endpoint side. This will transform private networks from mere transmission pipes into intelligent production partners (see Figure 1).

Figure 1: From transmission pipes to intelligent production partners

Technological innovation: Building an industrial agent inside the private network

To meet these needs, Huawei has partnered with leading global carriers and industry partners to develop the overall architecture of the 5G-A private network's industrial agent. This architecture focuses on three functions.

• Making private networks easy for junior O&M staff to operate

  In traditional private networks, tasks like terminal configuration, 5G LAN VN group orchestration, and policy updates rely heavily on senior network engineers at each step. This leads to huge maintenance barriers and long response times for enterprises. The private network agent transforms this process. In factories with frequent production line changes, managers can simply issue commands like "add the five new robots in workshop 3 to the production group." The agent, which automatically understands the manager's intent, completes group identification, orchestration, and policy delivery. This allows junior operations staff and even service managers to use the private network directly, lowering the usage threshold and reducing O&M costs.

• Enabling networks to understand enterprise knowledge

  Core enterprise assets like production knowledge, equipment ledgers, material labels, and technique specifications are often scattered across different systems. These assets include fragmented documents, operation manuals, and structured service data. The private network agent connects to the enterprise knowledge base, service system data, and IoT tag information to ensure the network understands services and can execute tasks independently and efficiently. For instance, in warehousing, management can simply say, "check the inventory of drainage pumps for all drum washing machines in warehouse area A." The agent then associates with passive IoT tags and position data to complete the inventory check instantly. For the first time, knowledge previously locked in complex tables or accessible only to experienced personnel can now be directly read and utilized by the network.

• Orchestrating complex tasks with network and service agents in concert

  In the past, network and service systems primarily connected via APIs. This fixed interaction limited the ability of the systems to handle complex, multi-step, cross-system tasks. Now, using industry-standard protocols like A2A and MCP, the private network and enterprise intelligent center can communicate at the agent level. The enterprise's production scheduling agent can send requests directly to the network agent. The network agent responds autonomously and schedules resources based on the current status. For example, for a batch of quality inspection tasks, a scheduling agent can request low-latency links, and a private network agent completes end-to-end resource orchestration.

These three functions transform private networks into an agent that can understand service languages, grasp enterprise knowledge, collaborate with intelligent systems, and proactively participate in services. In an enterprise’s cloud-edge-device architecture, the industrial private network agent resides at the edge (as shown in Figure 2). Using A2A and MCP protocols, the agent handles diverse enterprise services. Downstream, 5G-A connects a range of terminals from low-power IoT to device AI. This streamlines data, computing power, and AI capabilities at the production site.

Figure 2: Enterprise cloud-edge-device architecture

From pilot to scale: Business practices

Only in real production environments can we see the value of technical concepts. In 2025, Huawei's Cloud Core Network Product Line collaborated with China Mobile Research Institute, China Mobile Jiangsu, and industry customers to launch the first 5G-A industrial private network agent project. This initiative won the 5G-A Industrial Private Network Intelligent Agent Award 2025 from CWW.

The project used a 5G-A + MEC + AIGC architecture, moving inference capabilities to the factory using local computing power. It integrated an enterprise knowledge base, 5G private network knowledge base, and mainstream foundation model ecosystem to deliver high-quality network assurance for major production services like AGV navigation and programmable logic control. The tested network offers 1 Gbit/s downlink speeds, 400 Mbit/s uplink speeds, end-to-end latency under 20 ms, and programmable logic control latency below 10 ms.

Network capabilities are turned into directly usable services when the industrial private network agent enters real-world factory settings. When an AGV encounters an issue, the system locates the root cause and offers handling suggestions within 10 seconds. O&M personnel can say "perform a network-wide inspection" and receive a structured report covering all domains within 15 minutes. This significantly shortens the risk check times for latency-sensitive services like programmable logic control. When employees encounter process problems on the production line, they can access the standard operation guide within 3 seconds. Previously scattered knowledge on R&D, manufacturing, and quality inspection is now readily available to employees.

The project covers diverse production settings and boosts overall service efficiency by about 30%. These solutions are being standardized and implemented in more manufacturing settings.

Working together to explore new B2B growth in the AI era

As AI integrates with private networks, carriers can expand the scope and value of their B2B services. Moving beyond traditional connection monetization, carriers are now seeing growth in payments for computing power, new applications, and new services. This extends the value chain from a mere pipe to a comprehensive combination of networks, computing, and applications.

Looking ahead, Huawei will work with carriers and industry partners to develop industry models in more real-world production settings. We aim to convert the integration of AI and private networks into business value for customers, and to work with partners along the industry chain to embrace new forms of B2B growth.

Building Agent-Oriented Mobile Networks for Shared Success in the Agentverse Era

Agent-centric networks with upgraded capabilities, experience assurance, and open intent interfaces unlock trillion-dollar Agentverse opportunities.

Over the past three decades, the information and communications industry has focused on connectivity — linking people to people, people to things, and things to things in the digital world. However, as the global mobile AI wave accelerates, the industry is poised for structural changes. With 3.7 billion daily minutes of AI human-machine calls and over 1.3 billion monthly active users of mobile AI applications, the information interaction model is evolving from human-to-human to human-machine and machine-machine. Agents are also growing at an unprecedented rate, deeply penetrating various industries and ushering in the Agentverse — a world where humans, machines, and intelligent agents seamlessly connect and collaborate. Just as PCs gave way to the mobile internet, transforming lives and leading us into a golden age of mobile telecommunications, the Agentverse will similarly redefine the future of mobile communications.

The rise of agents fuels the token economy and industry productivity

Currently, the rapid iteration of foundation models is driving the exponential growth of inference capabilities. AI is evolving from passive tools into agents capable of autonomous planning, long-term reasoning, and proactive task execution. As agents break through application silos and integrate into diverse physical devices like smart glasses, connected vehicles, and embodied robots, connectivity is transforming. It is no longer just about transferring information, but also about decision-making and collaboration. Each device becomes an interactive anchor point, bridging the digital and physical worlds like never before.

The popularization of agents is driving a massive surge in token usage. According to the National Data Administration, average daily token calls in China have skyrocketed from hundreds of billions to trillions in just two years. As agents like OpenClaw increasingly move to the device side, a single complex device-cloud interaction can involve up to millions of token calls. It is predicted that the number of active agents will surge from 28.6 million in 2025 to 900 billion in 2035. This huge number of agents will reshape production and daily life, enabling every individual, every family, and every enterprise to access intelligence on demand.

Personal agents reshape individual productivity: Agents will act as digital assistants for every user, providing long-term, stable companionship while improving work efficiency and quality of life. For example, in recruitment, the AI agent of Liepin (a leading human resource service company in China) has demonstrated remarkable capabilities: It can process 100 resumes in 40 seconds, accurately recommend potential candidates in 4 minutes, boost interview rates by 60%, and reduce recruitment costs by 90%. In children's education, agents power AI toys with deep emotional interaction and personalized learning capabilities, helping children expand their vocabularies by 30% through targeted teaching.

Home agents build premium smart spaces: Agents are gradually penetrating various home terminals, from smart speakers, central control screens, and fitness mirrors to traditional home appliances such as refrigerators and ovens, enabling intelligent control and personalized services. Global carriers are now actively deploying in this high-value space. At MWC 2026, Chinese carriers showcased smart screens and home robots. European carriers like DT, Orange, and VDF are focusing on AI TV boxes, driving the transition from single-point intelligence to system intelligence in homes and comprehensively improving the quality of home life.

Industry agents accelerate digital and intelligent upgrades: By integrating AI agents' autonomous decision-making with the physical capabilities of embodied robots, industry agents are unlocking immense productivity when applied to core production processes. For example, China Southern Power Grid worked with China Mobile and Leju Robot to deploy embodied robots for power grid inspection. Leveraging a low-latency, high-reliability 5G-A network, the robots can use high-definition devices to read meter data in real time and send the results back to the cloud for analysis by foundation models. This enables long-distance autonomous obstacle avoidance and efficient fault detection, boosting inspection efficiency by 84%.

Three characteristics of agents drive a full upgrade of network capabilities

As physical entities across industries merge into the Agentverse, long-context inference and multi-agent collaboration are becoming the new norm. The traditional mobile network model — best-effort and downlink-prioritized —falls short of agent requirements. Therefore, to support real-time connection and collaboration between numerous agents, the network needs a comprehensive structural upgrade.

First, long-context inference demands greater uplink capacity.

When generating research reports and simulating programming processes, agents require background residence and long-context inference. Their context data accumulates with each interaction, and inference accuracy depends heavily on understanding long contexts. Today, the maximum context size has reached over 10 million tokens, making continuous uplink transmission of ultra-large data blocks a key challenge. For example, a single interaction involving 400,000 tokens between a mobile phone and a foundation model generates 1.4 MB of uplink traffic. If the context reaches 10 million tokens, the uplink traffic of a single interaction can exceed 45 MB. This high-capacity demand strains the uplink capabilities of existing base stations.

Second, real-time concurrency of multi-modal interactions stimulates demand for higher uplink rates.

In interactive scenarios like real-time translation and exhibition tours, real-time multi-modal perception and continuous human-computer interaction are crucial to user experience. In a typical AI tour guide scenario, the uplink traffic ratio often exceeds 60% during multi-user concurrency, as high-frame-rate video streams need to be sent to the cloud for visual understanding. To ensure accurate environmental recognition, uploading a single frame of HD imagery requires over 400 KB. The network needs much higher uplink bandwidth. Without it, uplink transmission quality will be impacted and multi-modal token transmission will become asynchronous, leading to irrelevant responses or interrupted conversations.

Finally, efficient execution of embodied AI calls for end-to-end experience assurance.

In scenarios like industrial control, autonomous driving, and embodied AI, agents require high response speeds and service continuity. For example, humanoid robots at major events operate at very high frequency. Even brief network congestion or jitter can cause inference disorders or total system shutdowns. Latency-sensitive applications demand stringent time to first byte (TTFB), low end-to-end latency, and minimal jitter. The network must therefore be capable of maintaining very strict and fixed thresholds for bit error rates and transmission latency to ensure high-assurance, end-to-end deterministic performance.

Building agent-oriented mobile networks for diverse Agentverse requirements

As interaction objects expand from humans to agents, interaction forms are evolving to become multi-modal, high-frequency, and continuous concurrency. To tackle these new network challenges, Huawei has achieved breakthroughs in three key areas: Network capability upgrade, user experience assurance, and intent interface openness. These collaborative innovations comprehensively support diverse Agentverse requirements.

First, building agentic mobile broadband (MBB) networks to create a multi-dimensional capability foundation

Sufficient uplink bandwidth is the cornerstone of the intelligent world. Currently, most networks' uplink edge rate is only 2–3 Mbit/s. 5G-A demands 20 Mbit/s uplink, and 6G demands 50 Mbit/s. To meet these needs, Huawei has introduced M-MIMO devices to deliver higher bandwidth and more channels. By leveraging technologies like global 3D intelligent coordination, flexible beamforming, and intelligent pairing, the network can dynamically allocate spectrum resources and optimize performance across timeframes, frequency, and area. This will double the quality experience of edge users and lay a solid foundation for a smooth transition to 6G.

Second, developing the innovative token block pipe to ensure agent service experience

The traditional QoS mechanism, designed for bit streams, effectively ensures video services but falls short in terms of handling AI's burst low-latency data transmission and multi-modal concurrency. To address this, Huawei provides the token block pipe mechanism, which is capable of dynamically constructing hierarchical transmission paths to cope with bursts of blocks and 100 ms latency services. Specifically, the mechanism provides high-speed, low-latency, low-jitter channels for visual stream blocks, and reserves dedicated, low-latency and high-reliability lanes for control stream blocks. This ensures differentiated assurance at the modal level.

In addition, just as the mean opinion score (MOS) was used to measure voice communication quality, Huawei has been working with authoritative organizations such as the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) and China Communications Standards Association (CCSA) to promote the initiation of AI-MOS experience evaluation standards. These standards will map the service quality of agents to network KPIs, for quantifiable end-to-end experience and the closed-loop management of network transmission quality.

Third, enabling multi-agent integration and ecosystem openness through A2A-T intent interfaces to drive carrier business success

Traditional networks rely on API calls, limiting service scalability. In the Agentverse, the communication network itself is an agent. China Mobile and Huawei have jointly launched the industry's first intent-driven interface, the Agent-to-Agent Telecom (A2A-T) intent interface, to facilitate communication between network agents and other agents. This interface not only provides carrier-grade security and reliability, but deeply understands multi-modal service intents and automatically converts them into network scheduling capabilities. This means that the time required for interface interconnection and deployment, which previously took months, can now be reduced to just days. Whether it is autonomous driving or fully automated smart factories, their dedicated agents can now access powerful network resources on demand.

Building the network foundation to embrace the Agentverse

Agent capabilities are evolving at astonishing speed, doubling every three months. The operational logic of various industries is being thoroughly reshaped by the Agentverse. Against this backdrop, our current vision of the future may seem overly conservative.

In this intelligent revolution, intelligence without network connectivity is like an information silo. Computing power sets the upper limit of an agent's intelligence, while network connectivity defines its action boundaries. 5G-A is already widely commercialized globally and will continue to unlock the limitless potential of agents. Over the next five years, the world will witness the explosive growth of mobile AI. This major shift will bring a golden opportunity to rebuild industry infrastructure and tap into a trillion-dollar business space.

Huawei looks forward to collaborating with global carriers, device ecosystems, and partners across various industries to build agent-oriented networks. Let this be the start of a new chapter. Together, we will create and embrace an Agentverse where agents are everywhere and empower every aspect of our lives.