Telecommunications Futures – A Perspective From China

Mobile networks have become essential digital infrastructure for everyday activities.

High-speed connectivity dominates the conversation around wireless communications services. On a recent trip through London, I came across Connected London Wi-Fi which aims to improve visitor and Westminster resident experiences by tackling digital and technology inequality through easy-to-access and free internet connectivity. Later, as I arrived in the US, Verizon was encouraging spectators to enjoy Super Bowl LIX exclusively over its purpose-built, stadium-wide 5G network. 

The emphasis on high-speed connectivity continues to prevail; while they are indoors - 90% of time of their time - US users consume more than 80 percent of their data. Finally, with the advent of 6G, it seems obligatory to mention faster communications and remote surgery.

Do these usage scenarios represent the full spectrum of communications use cases? Not likely based on the prevalence of global users, many of whom live in China and India. Many also lead a rural and mobile existence, i.e., not dominated by indoor use but requiring dependable and ubiquitous wide-area connectivity. So, what does usage look like in other parts of the world?

My travels were bringing me back from a trip through mostly rural parts of China. The trip shed light on a set of usage behaviors that put a different slant on network connectivity. Everywhere I visited, people relied on mobile networks to keep in touch for business and personal reasons, and to facilitate commercial transactions. Mobile connectivity has become the foundation of digital public infrastructure, enabling not only communications but commerce and convenience as well.

5G Everywhere 

Whether driving across Shenzhen, on highways, via minor roads, or trekking across rice paddies, network connectivity was a constant. Most of the time, my phone showed four or five bars of 5G signal strength. 

High-altitude, rice paddies and mobile coverage

On an hour-long journey through central Shenzhen, my traveling companion watched a movie on the dashboard console in a new (hybrid) car. Connectivity was just a good traveling through Yunan Province, one of China’s less wealthy provinces, ranking 23 out of 31. This was as true on highways as on the mountain roads that drivers took to avoid paying highway tolls. Impressively, there was usable 5G coverage even when walking between neighboring villages across valleys and the rice terraces of Yuanyan province at altitudes of 2000 meters. 

Watching local users, voice communication seemed more common among older users and messaging among younger generations. Everyone indulged in watching and originating short-form video content. 

Communications for Commerce

I was fortunate to be traveling with a local. That allowed me to peer over their shoulders as they used WeChat for every aspect of our travels. We booked museum tickets, ride-shares, taxis, and train tickets. To avoid the queues, we ordered refreshments ahead at Chagee, the tea equivalent of Starbucks. We also ordered snacks (a single portion of cut fruit, for example) and meals from take-out restaurants. This was possible because of dependable mobile-network access. 

Dependable communications meant that we paid for everything via Apps and QR codes. Ubiquitous and dependable communications provide a common foundation so that suppliers such as transport service providers, and sellers (street vendors, food-carts etc.) all have an incentive to jump on the e-payments bandwagon. 

Many street corners, bus stops, and shops housed small stands with a bank of battery packs. Upon scanning a QR code, a person would extract a rechargeable battery and drop it off at a different location after use. The widespread availability of these ‘vending’ machines made this a usable proposition. 

Communications for Convenience 

Almost every restaurant, even ‘hole-in-the-wall’ ones, offered Wi-Fi connectivity. However, as many handwritten signs with password details were illegible (the ink had faded), customers appear to rely more on mobile than Wi-Fi connectivity. Interestingly, when my companion’s phone could not get a mobile network signal indoors, restaurant staff and street vendors offered a personal hotspot connection via their mobiles. The sharing process was remarkably quick – swifter and more convenient compared to connecting to a Wi-Fi access point. With generous data bundles, I was even offered personal hotspot access to watch a live-streamed sporting event. 

The ubiquity of communications and commerce was most impressive during train rides on the (relatively) high speed network. All passengers (apart from those on ‘standing’ tickets) held seat reservations. Each seat carried a QR code which, upon scanning, provided the train’s route map. On an early morning trip, which meant skipping breakfast, we looked at the upcoming train stops along with a list of food outlets for each stop. Each outlet published its menu with a common interface for ordering and payment. When the train reached that stop, our meal was delivered to the restaurant car. A few minutes, a train attendant delivered it to the seat from which we had put in the order. 

Another example of convenience involves robots in hotels. Robots are a COVID era legacy when there were restrictions on person-to-person interactions. Nowadays, hotels have repurposed robots for room delivery. As with the railway example, it is straightforward to order a meal for delivery to one’s hotel. A delivery rider would collect a prepared meal and place it in the hotel’s robot which would then make its way to one’s room. On arrival, the robot would call the room telephone with a recorded message so that the guest could come to the door and take their package out of the storage compartment. Why not ring the caller’s phone? That is to allow friends to order meals and packages for delivery to a given room. This WaiMai system works for three reasons. It functions on top of ubiquitous connectivity. It builds on a technical platform comprising ordering, identity management, and payments services. It works off procedural and technical standards that allow even the smallest street-food vendor to join and have confidence in order fulfillment, both of which contribute to network scaling. 

A third anecdote involves a 30-minute taxi ride from an airport to a hotel, initially along a toll road. A few minutes into the ride, the driver ran several searches on his mobile phone, zooming into a portion of the journey map, and then bringing up street photos. Since my destination was in a one-way system, I thought he was looking for short cuts. As soon as we came off the toll road, however, our driver took a short detour, stopped in a designated parking bay, and ran a few meters into a public toilet. Setting aside the safety issue of a 5-minute browser search while driving at high speed, this story illustrates the value of being able to connect remotely to a street data ecosystem. This allowed him to search for public facilities along our route and then to pull up contextual data to assess parking availability. 

Immersive Experiences 

There is a tendency to associate immersive experiences with advanced eyewear or headgear that create interactive visualizations, giving users the sensation of being in a virtual world. The high processing requirements for immersive gear go along with high energy and high bandwidth demands. This need not be the sole category for thinking about immersive experiences. Less demanding and more pragmatic scenarios are also possible. 

Many passenger vehicles in China used digital-screen technology in place of reflective, rear-view mirrors. Often, a split screen arrangement provided forward and rear-looking views via the car’s imaging sensors. In newer and higher-end vehicles, the dashboard console took the form of a wide, digital display. These technologies gave a different complexion to the notion of immersive experiences. One example came from a long taxi ride through a mountainous region in foggy conditions. The forward display visuals, on the ‘rear-view’ mirror, provided a clearer view of the road ahead than my eyesight. It is interesting to speculate how such information might be presented in a head-up display, for example. Or what opportunities might arise from integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) capabilities in 6G. The downside, of course, is to encourage faster driving. 

A second immersive example arose when driving in small towns where pedestrians, cyclists, and e-scooter riders weaved from road to sidewalk. Driving under such conditions can be unnerving at the best of times. Even worse, imagine driving in reverse for a few hundred yards (to escape a couple of traffic jams, in our situation) and at nighttime. Remarkably, the seemingly immersive display (low-light enhanced video, three-dimensional digital twin of vehicle relative to its surroundings, overlay lines projecting the direction of travel) helped our driver to negotiate distances of tens of meters smoothly (i.e., no stop-starts) and safely on more than one occasion. 

Future Telecommunications Implications for 6G and IoT 

Mobile networks are known for providing subscriber communications services. However, their role has evolved to become a general-purpose technology with economy-wide effects in adjacent and downstream industries. Positioning them as part of the public infrastructure, China has unleashed far reaching economic activity, down to the level of individual merchants and traders. This relies on communications networks being an integral component in a system of systems. 

The system of systems approach has parallels with India, where policy makers are committed to digital public infrastructure at scale. Example systems include digital identification (called Aadhar), a payments system running as a Unified Payment Interface, and a data exchange layer. 

User scale in China (and India) will influence global technology and service innovation. Here are some implications for the IoT and 6G markets:

• How subscribers use data matters more than how much data they exchange. 6G’s proponents need to calibrate demand for bandwidth-intensive and exotic use cases with less headline-grabbing uses. People want to make purchases or consume services within a trusted environment, one that includes complementary fulfillment processes (payments, delivery etc.). The emphasis is on transactions, often involving modest data payloads. That is one thing in common with most IoT scenarios and the growing number of low power, connected devices.
  

• China’s economic backdrop (population density and purchasing power) and communications market context delivers ubiquitous, mobile connectivity (as far as my travels are representative). What combination of competition, investor expectations, public policy, and regulatory measures will deliver similar levels of service in other markets? This matters because dependable and equitable services are goals for 6G.

• Communications systems are parts of a system of systems. These are not limited to service enablers (e.g., identity management, payments but also include domain-specific systems (e.g., digital twins, place-dependent private networks). The roadmap for 6G needs to reflect such interdependencies, spanning horizontal service-enablement and adjacent industry specifics. This entails a shift from focusing on consumer services to enterprise, IoT, and information-oriented propositions (e.g., digital twins and data supply chains among others). It will require communications service providers to develop new skills and channels to market. 
  

• Standardization (ideally of the non-proprietary type) is critical for interoperability and hence market scale. Interoperability extends beyond connectivity in the technology stack. Other aspects, such as mechanisms to share data with context (e.g., open and easily shared data models, and semantic interoperability) also matter. 
  

• There was a welcoming attitude to technology in in China (and in India, I suspect) with the aim of expanding business opportunities and improving business productivity. Such positivism contrasts with risk-aversion in other economies. 
  

• There will be spillover effects from the mass markets of China and India to other parts of the world, in the form of innovative services, developer-friendly toolkits, and price compression on technology. This year’s Lunar New Year saw Deepseek reshaping the economics and business model for AI.