China Unicom： Building the Digital Silk Road with High Quality

"Intelligence and informatization are the development trends of the industry. Countries should strengthen exchanges and cooperation in the fields of 5G and artificial intelligence and share the fruits of technological development." During the activity of "Chinese Envoys Entering the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology" held on April 18th this year, more than 100 Chinese Envoys and representatives of international organizations visited China Unicom. When visiting China Unicom Innovation Experience Center, Lebanese Ambassador to China Miriya Jabr said.

"5G technology will bring profound changes to the world, but there is no 5G application in Botswana at present." Moluohua, Minister Counselor of Botswana Embassy in China, who was in close contact with the 5G application scene for the first time, was very interested in the digital transformation of 5G-enabled production mode in the exhibition hall. She said that the development experience of China was very inspiring and she looked forward to deepening cooperation with China in the fields of smart agriculture, education and infrastructure.

In recent years, China Unicom has made great efforts to improve its core competitiveness and sustainable development ability, achieved new results by promoting high-quality development with new weather and new actions, and helped Chinese modernization with digitalization, networking and intelligence. At the same time, China Unicom is actively building new digital infrastructure around the world to provide high-quality information and communication services to customers around the world. Especially in the past decade, China Unicom has thoroughly implemented the "Belt and Road" initiative, aiming at a new leap in development quality, a new layout of infrastructure, a new breakthrough in digital intelligence services, new scientific and technological innovations, and a new improvement in governance efficiency, expanding new space for international cooperation and building a digital Silk Road with high quality.

Building a new digital infrastructure

China Unicom not only has the international land and sea cable resources and backbone Internet with "East-West mutual aid, North-South mutual backup, land-sea cooperation and robust access" in the world, but also is providing high-quality computing load-bearing network, data center and cloud network edge integration services for users all over the world.

In July 2018, China Unicom set up a leading group to participate in the "Belt and Road" construction, and has worked out an annual action plan for the "Belt and Road" construction for six consecutive years to comprehensively promote the construction of digital information infrastructure.

In fact, the gradual maturity of China Unicom’s international business can be traced back to 2015. In May 2015, China Unicom International Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Unicom International"), which aims to provide a package of comprehensive information services to global customers, was formally established, becoming the preferred partner of international digital services for Chinese-funded enterprises to "go global" and foreign-funded enterprises to "come in".

Over the years, China Unicom has actively improved the network capabilities of countries and regions along the Belt and Road Initiative, and comprehensively planned the construction of global submarine optical cables, overseas land cables, submarine cable landing stations, international customs offices and cross-border land cables. At present, China Unicom has more than 20 land and cable border stations, and has completed interconnection with dozens of operators around it, many of which are unique resources with distinctive features. For example, several sets of large-capacity and low-delay wavelength division systems built between Shenzhen and Hong Kong are important channels connecting the mainland with Hong Kong and overseas; China-Russia, China-Mongolia and China-Kazakhstan land cables are important channels connecting Central Asia and Europe, while China-Laos, China-Vietnam and China-Myanmar land cables are important channels connecting ASEAN countries. At the same time, China Unicom enjoys capacity in more than 60 submarine cable systems, and multi-path terrestrial optical cables and multiple submarine cables in the direction of "Belt and Road" can be mutually safely backed up, connecting major countries and regions along the route. On May 12th, 2022, the SEA-H2X submarine cable initiated by China Unicom began to be laid, and it is planned to be put into operation in 2024. It will connect China, Hongkong, China, Hainan, the Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia and Singapore, and further extend to Vietnam, Cambodia and Indonesia. After the completion of the submarine cable, it can effectively meet the demand for network bandwidth in Asia and speed up the digital industrialization and industry digitalization in Asia and the world.

Signing ceremony of Asia-Africa-Europe No.1 submarine cable project.

However, the layout of China Unicom is far more than that.

As early as August 2017, the China-Myanmar International Cross-border Optical Cable (CMI) jointly built by China Unicom and Myanmar MPT was completed and put into operation. This optical cable is a terrestrial optical cable trunk line project starting from Ruili, Yunnan, China, and running through Myanmar to Weishuang, Bay of Bengal, opening up a new channel from China to Europe and Africa. In addition, the Asia-Europe No.5 (SMW5) and Asia-Africa-Europe No.1 (AAE-1) submarine cables invested and constructed by China Unicom form a double submarine cable coverage along the Belt and Road, which can be extended to important urban business access points in France, Germany, Italy and other countries after landing.

It is understood that the Asia-Europe No.5 and Asia-Africa-Europe No.1 submarine cables are highly coincident with the Maritime Silk Road and are important communication infrastructures of the Belt and Road Initiative. From Hongkong, China to Marseille, France, it connects 19 countries, most of which are countries and regions along the Belt and Road, which enhances the robustness and security of the overall network from China to West Asia, South Asia, Africa and Europe. It is a demonstration project to discuss, build and share global communication infrastructure.

In November 2018, the South Atlantic International Submarine Cable (SAIL) participated by China Unicom was officially put into production, with a total length of 6,000 kilometers. It is the first new intercontinental fast direct submarine cable channel across the South Atlantic and connecting the African continent and the South American continent. As an important communication infrastructure in the southern hemisphere, the South Atlantic international submarine optical cable has opened up a new channel for Internet exports in western Africa and South America, and promoted the deepening of international cooperation in the digital economy.

The Asia Direct (ADC) submarine cable project is also an important project for China Unicom to implement the Belt and Road Initiative. This project is a submarine cable project to strengthen the layout of the Asia-Pacific region. It was launched at the end of February 2020 and jointly invested by China Unicom and international operators. The submarine cable will land in China, Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Thailand, Singapore and other countries, with a total length of more than 6,500 kilometers.

In order to further implement the "Belt and Road Initiative" and effectively support the construction of digital gateway in South Asia, China Unicom held the opening ceremony of Lhasa regional international communication service import and export bureau in August 2022. After the completion of Lhasa regional international communication service import and export bureau, it will meet the needs of international business development for South Asian countries, improve the service quality of international communication services for South Asian countries, and provide favorable conditions for global economic and cultural exchanges and cooperation.

China Unicom uses its own advantages to implement the innovation-driven development strategy and accelerate the realization of high-level scientific and technological self-reliance; Through the development of a unified SDN intelligent management and control platform, the enhanced functions such as customized QoS and rapid distribution of configuration of data network can be realized, and it has become one of the main service providers connecting Hong Kong and overseas in the mainland, America and Central Asia and Europe in East Asia, and Southeast Asian countries in China.

Provide quality communication services.

Quality service can create a good reputation. China Unicom continues to create value for customers and provide impetus and support for the development of the global digital economy by creating an ecosystem of countries and regions along the Belt and Road.

In many countries and regions along the Belt and Road in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, Unicom International has actively established an international talent team, rationally deployed the "Belt and Road" human resources by recruiting local people, giving full play to the advantages of global talents and enhancing customer experience.

Since the beginning of this year, Unicom International has completed the strategic layout of representative offices in Laos, Hungary and Mongolia. So far, Unicom International has more than 30 branches around the world, and more than 130 overseas business access points covering Asia, North America, Europe, Oceania, Africa and South America.

With the increase of branches, the intelligent evolution of China Unicom’s network has also achieved remarkable results. The relevant person in charge of Unicom International said that Unicom’s overseas data network has completed the evolution of SDN, and the SDN rate has reached 100%. In addition, the network robustness is continuously improved, so that the global traffic is further balanced and the network stability is effectively improved. The two indicators of Internet delay and packet loss rate remain the best in the industry throughout the year.

In terms of mobile roaming services for the public, China Unicom has included more than 100 countries and regions along the Belt and Road into the international roaming "Baotian tariff zone". Since 2020, China Unicom has lowered the international long-distance and international roaming tariffs of more than 100 countries and regions, with the largest drop of 89%. Through product optimization and tariff concessions, China Unicom has become the "chief consultant for international smart application of inbound and outbound business customers"; The number of VoLTE and 5G NSA service operators has increased from 11 to 75, and the activity of "Travel the world freely and use the traffic at will" covers China, Hong Kong, Macao, 10 ASEAN countries, Australia and New Zealand, providing great convenience for Unicom customers to use the traffic abroad. In terms of providing high-quality digital services for "going out" enterprises, we have focused on key industries such as industrial manufacturing, finance, government media, transportation and logistics, energy and e-commerce, and created "One Belt, One Road" international express products. Unicom SD-WAN products have achieved global coverage, and cloud networking services have covered the resource pools of major overseas partners. In building the "Belt and Road" circle of friends, we provide professional services to more than 3,000 corporate customers around the world, work closely with more than 1,000 partners, strengthen international exchanges and cooperation, and achieve mutual benefit and win-win results.

At present, China Unicom is providing local Internet bandwidth services to more than 200 institutions and enterprises in Hong Kong and cross-border circuit services to more than 500 institutions and enterprises. In China Unicom (Hongkong) Tseung Kwan O Smart Cloud Data Center, more than 50 government agencies and corporate customers in Internet, finance, energy, retail and other industries have settled in, enjoying the safe and reliable professional services of China Unicom. It is worth mentioning that Tseung Kwan O Smart Cloud Data Center covers the data centers of HKEx and large banks, and can realize millisecond network connection with the financial industry. The low delay of 0.2 milliseconds with HKEx is a scarce resource in the industry, and it is a veritable international financial customer service center.

On December 3, 2021, China-Laos Railway, a landmark project of building the Belt and Road with high quality, was officially opened to traffic. It is reported that China Unicom Yunnan Branch and Yunnan Telecom have overcome the difficulties of complicated terrain and achieved the coverage of the entire line of 4G network in China-Laos Railway. The tunnel adopts the way of seamless connection between communication leakage cables and outdoor signals, and realizes special functions such as Doppler frequency offset compensation, cell merger and fast switching, so as to ensure that passengers can connect to stable network signals on high-speed trains. Not only that, Yunnan Unicom also achieved 5G network coverage in key areas such as stations. After testing, the download rate reached 860Mbps.

In the future, China Unicom will continue to join hands with partners at home and abroad to build the Digital Silk Road, actively lay out the new digital information infrastructure capabilities of "high-speed ubiquity, integration of heaven and earth, integration of cloud and network, intelligence and agility, green and low-carbon, security and controllability", improve the digital intelligence service level through scientific and technological innovation, and provide new kinetic energy, new value and new wisdom for the digital economy development of countries and regions along the Belt and Road with high-quality, safe and reliable products, services and solutions.

Improve the livelihood and well-being of local people.

As the third largest population in Africa and the third largest economy on the African continent, the supply and storage conditions of medical resources in Egypt are relatively limited, with a large geographical gap and uneven distribution.

"Because of the high temperature and poor storage conditions, not only Egypt, but also most countries in Africa are facing the problem of insufficient supply of medical materials." Longfei, the project manager of China Unicom, shared his experiences in Africa and told his excitement when he learned about the demand for digital construction of cold storage: "This is a project with a thousand times more significance than profit!"

In 2022, the Egyptian government issued the goal of achieving 70% vaccination rate for all people, which put forward extremely high requirements for the local production capacity, storage capacity, cold storage capacity, deployment capacity and logistics capacity of Egyptian vaccines. China Unicom joined hands with China Kexing and China Construction Eighth Bureau to jointly build the Egyptian vaccine cold storage, and the input hardware and software customization intelligence have reached the international advanced level. At the same time, the cold storage is also the largest vaccine storage center in Egypt and even Africa, which will greatly improve the cold chain storage and transportation capacity of vaccines in Egypt in the future and further improve the vaccine supply chain in Africa.

The smart warehouse project invested by China Unicom this time has a construction area of 2,800 square meters and a storage capacity of 150 million doses. China Unicom has built an intelligent warehouse management system based on Internet of Things technology. By applying technologies such as sensors, wireless communication and cloud computing to warehouse management, it can realize automatic management from warehousing to warehousing. By improving the operation efficiency of the warehouse system, it can reduce the operating cost of cold storage and ensure the safety of vaccine storage.

"Compared with China, the local digitalization level in Egypt is relatively backward. In the past, warehouse management needed to be manually entered, and there were many categories to fill in. The process was complicated, the work was heavy, and the error rate was particularly high." Longfei pointed to the flow chart of each link of the system. "Our system effectively controls and tracks all links in the whole life cycle of the cold storage business, provides perfect information management of vaccine cold storage, reduces manual participation, reduces management costs, realizes the intelligence and automation of warehouse management, and improves the efficiency, controllability and safety of warehouse management."

Help China enterprises "go global"

Under the traction of the Belt and Road Initiative, China enterprises have actively promoted investment cooperation with countries and regions along the Belt and Road Initiative. As a representative enterprise of China’s manufacturing industry, Great Wall Motor has actively deployed all over the world, built its third overseas wholly-owned manufacturing plant in Luo Yong Industrial Park in Thailand, radiated the ASEAN region with Thailand as the center, and exported its products to other ASEAN countries and Australia.

It is the first difficult problem for Great Wall Motor to quickly put into production to carry out digital information transformation of the acquired old factories. China Unicom and Great Wall Motor actively communicate in multi-departments, multi-aspects and multi-nodes, grasp the core problems and demands in the actual operation process, respond quickly, and complete the transformation of industrial network and office network system, new monitoring system replacement, new and old unified communication system construction and wireless network coverage in the park based on the principle of utilizing the old. "It is more difficult to rebuild a factory than to build three new ones. We should not only consider the production scenarios, but also maximize the value of old industrial plants." Liu Ya Lin Rushi, project manager of China Unicom, said.

In just seven months, China Unicom and the Great Wall Motor team have worked closely together to rejuvenate the old factory from the inside out: the digital production network and international dedicated line that meet the requirements of modern production have replaced the old network infrastructure, and the IT system to ensure its domestic and foreign interconnection and cooperation has been launched in the core computer room. The electromechanical distribution and lighting equipment in the park has been more scientific and safe after deepening transformation …

Empowering digital economy to accelerate development

The year 2023 marks the 20th anniversary of China-ASEAN Expo and China-ASEAN Business and Investment Summit (hereinafter referred to as "China-ASEAN Expo" and "Summit"). Over the past 20 years, China and ASEAN countries have continuously reached a consensus on cooperation, enhanced strategic mutual trust, and strengthened cultural exchanges, thus promoting the sustained and in-depth development of China-ASEAN relations. China Unicom has always kept pace with the development of China-ASEAN Expo and the Summit, accelerated the construction of communication infrastructure and contributed to the construction of the Belt and Road Initiative.

With the rapid development of regional economy between China and ASEAN, and the rapid growth of China-ASEAN trade, people’s exchanges have become increasingly frequent. From laying the first optical cable line between Guangxi and ASEAN countries, to establishing Nanning International Bureau to build an international gateway for 10 ASEAN countries, and then to enabling China and ASEAN countries to develop their digital economy, China Unicom has actively accelerated the construction of information and communication infrastructure, and built a digital "connecting bridge" with 10 ASEAN countries through information and communication interconnection.

The construction of communication infrastructure and the improvement of connectivity have provided strong support for the development of digital economy in China and ASEAN countries. On the basis of the previous period, China Unicom has successively opened international direct channels from Nanning to Vietnam, Nanning to Laos and Nanning to Myanmar, actively expanding the outbound data services of domestic corporate customers and ASEAN countries, providing business continuity and international transmission network services for the international outbound services of domestic governments, banks and enterprises to Vietnam, Cambodia and Thailand, and assisting customers to expand their international business in Southeast Asia and Europe.

At the beginning of September this year, China Unicom actively cooperated with China-ASEAN Economic and Trade Center to create a "one-stop digital communication service" window, providing specialized international communication services for domestic "going out" enterprises and "brought in" enterprises in ASEAN region, providing international digital private line services and cross-border cloud connection, cross-border office applications, overseas IDC customization, ITO and other communication services for foreign-related enterprises, as well as consulting and handling services for data traffic sharing services in 47 countries.

Up to now, China Unicom has provided more than 300 outbound business circuits for domestic industries and ASEAN countries, over 120 international inbound business circuits and over 240 cooperation projects, enabling ASEAN countries to develop their digital economy.

Expand new space for international cooperation.

Under the general trend of global market integration, China Unicom focuses on key industries such as industrial manufacturing, finance, media, transportation and logistics, energy and e-commerce, providing one-stop products and solutions for customers around the world, and continuously creating value for customers in countries and regions along the Belt and Road Initiative.

On the afternoon of December 15th, 2022, Egypt time, the glass fiber production line of China Jushi Egypt Company with an annual output of 120,000 tons was successfully ignited. After the project is put into operation, the annual production capacity of Jushi Egyptian Glass Fiber Base will reach 340,000 tons, making it the largest glass fiber production base in Africa, which not only fills the blank of glass fiber manufacturing in the whole Middle East and North Africa, but also has a "milestone" significance for the internationalization strategy of china glass’s fiber industry.

"Jushi Group has two local factories. We installed security systems for the two factories through digital means. From the LED large-screen display system of the main factory, we can understand the security situation of the whole factory and deal with it in advance." The relevant person in charge of China Unicom introduced.

To help the digital transformation of global enterprise intelligent manufacturing, we must not only base ourselves on the present, but also focus on the future. China Unicom makes full use of its successful experience in intelligent manufacturing projects for many years. While completing the wired coverage and comprehensive wiring project of the overall regional network, it also adds reserved points and related resources for the later factory capacity improvement and equipment expansion.

Guinea, located on the west coast of West Africa, is one of the countries with the richest natural resources in the world and one of the least developed countries in Africa. Guinea’s economy is dominated by agriculture and mining, and its industrial base is weak, so its food cannot be self-sufficient. China Unicom Boffa Bauxite Mine Car Networking Radio Communication Project settled here.

5G/4G-NAS integrated system, microwave transmission system, video monitoring system, VHF communication system, vehicle positioning anti-theft oil and load metering system … Various advanced scientific and technological means have been applied in Boffa bauxite mine project, which has created one industrial miracle after another for Guinea: cloud cameras are placed on communication towers in ports and mines, and the basic network of mine vehicle positioning system is guaranteed by cloud computing capability; With 5G/4GNSA and expanded VHF interconnected with existing networks and systems in port camps, functions such as dispatching control, on-board metering, vehicle condition monitoring, electronic door, electronic map, mobile machinery positioning and trajectory playback, abnormal fuel consumption alarm, vehicle electronic fence, etc. are realized; The dispatching intelligent center is equipped with two LED display screens, which can realize real-time access to vehicle positioning, video monitoring and other functions; Install the positioning acquisition device on the vehicle, upload the data to the platform server, and perform data visualization and graphical display by algorithm calculation …

Today, Boffa Bauxite has provided vehicle networking services for more than 10,000 commercial vehicles, meeting the requirements of vehicle performance monitoring and safety fault detection. It has not only achieved less or even unmanned processes, but also made beneficial exploration for African mining and extractive industries, and contributed China experience and China wisdom to the process of industrial modernization in Africa.

The road is far away, and the sea is wide and wide.

From "hard Unicom" to "soft Unicom" and then to "heart Unicom", China Unicom is becoming the value creator of international digital services trusted by customers, empowering customers in thousands of industries around the world. The Belt and Road Initiative originated in China, but the opportunities and achievements belong to the world. Facing the future, China Unicom will adhere to the principle of "promoting the building of a community of human destiny", rely on its own advantages in network, data, technology and users, brainstorm ideas and build consensus with the industrial chain, expand new space for international cooperation, and strive to create a bright future of "One Belt, One Road" open cooperation and win-win development.