Author：China Telecom、China Unicom、China Tower

Since 2019, China Telecom and China Unicom have been working on full life-cycle 5G network co-construction and sharing. They have succeeded in tackling many challenges, such as networking and operations management of 5G RANs, ultimately co-built the world's first and largest 5G SA shared network, and put it into large-scale commercial use.

As the cooperation expands, new challenges to network operation and scheduling, such as lack of convenient data exchange and effective supervision on network configurations, are arising, hampering the cooperation efficiency.

To solve these problems, China Telecom, China Unicom, and China Tower jointly built the world's first and largest 5G network operation and scheduling system based on multi-operator BaaS collaboration, enabling unified deployment of Tianyi Cloud and Unicom Cloud, as well as secure, reliable, and efficient network management.

The system is designed for three application scenarios, which are credential saving and verification of key parameters, determination of responsibility for work orders, and resource scheduling based on smart contracts. In these scenarios, the system enables joint data management, joint network planning, joint construction management, joint operations analysis, and joint office and collaboration, ensuring all the related departments at different levels coordinate well in networking planning, construction, maintenance, and optimization.

In terms of technology, the system boasts four major innovations:

As a significant breakthrough in multi-operator BaaS collaboration, the system enables not only independent management of BaaS nodes of each party, but also the collaboration between the nodes of different parties. As for standardization, the operators have jointly formulated standards and created patent clusters for blockchain-based network co-construction and sharing, and promoted the development of these standards in China Communications Standards Association (CCSA).

Until now, the system manages over 300 local networks in 31 provincial level administrative divisions in China, including over 1 million 5G and 4G shared base stations respectively. With hundreds of millions of data records shared and verified on blockchain, the operation efficiency is doubled, annually saving around 3 billion USD operation fees and over 10 billion kWH electricity, and reducing carbon emissions more than 6 million tons.

In the future, the multi-operator BaaS collaboration will provide underlying blockchain services and scheduling capabilities to bolster efficiency and trust in data exchange among all sectors engaged in network co-construction and sharing. It lays a solid foundation for the development of digital infrastructure, and injects a strong impetus into the global digital economy.

This content is sponsored by C114.