China Telecom Shaanxi Branch and Huawei jointly innovated and implemented the world's first commercial use of the "5G + Wi-Fi + IoT" converged campus network solution at a top-ranked university in Shaanxi Province, China. #sponsor

November 21, 2022

4 Min Read
The "5G + Wi-Fi + IoT" Converged Campus Network Solution Sees World-First Commercial Use at a Top-Ranked University, Setting

China Telecom Shaanxi Branch and Huawei jointly innovated and implemented the world's first commercial use of the "5G + Wi-Fi + IoT" converged campus network solution at a top-ranked university in Shaanxi Province, China. This future-proof solution helps build a hyper-converged smart campus network inside and outside the campus, with stand-out features such as 5G, Wi-Fi, and IoT convergence, unified authentication, and secure access. Transcending traditional campus walls, this new network provides both students and teachers with consistent, ultimate service experience anytime, anywhere.

As digital transformation ramps up, organizations in the education industry are increasingly going wireless-first. Many universities have built ubiquitous Wi-Fi networks to improve teaching efficiency and quality. Nonetheless, they are still up against a series of increasingly prominent issues, such as how to access campus resources anywhere outside the campus, as well as how to securely and conveniently access campus resources.

To address these issues, China Telecom Shaanxi Branch and Huawei jointly developed a "5G + Wi-Fi + IoT converged campus network solution. This solution combines wide 5G coverage outside the campus with large-capacity Wi-Fi coverage inside the campus. In this way, users enjoy consistent network permissions and accessible domains, no matter whether they use 5G or Wi-Fi. This solution also goes further by converging IoT networks. As such, a "5G + Wi-Fi + IoT" converged campus network takes shape, creating a new smart campus network inside and outside the campus.

Figure 1: China Telecom Shaanxi Branch China Telecom Shaanxi Branch

The "5G + Wi-Fi + IoT converged campus network solution offers four stand-out features:

  • Unified planning: Resources such as optical cables and power supplies are planned in a unified manner with current and future service requirements in mind. Similarly, 5G, Wi-Fi, and IoT networks are centrally planned, avoiding signal interference while achieving optimal wireless signal coverage and ultimate user experience.

  • Flexible construction: 5G, Wi-Fi, and IoT networks are constructed separately or in an integrated manner, according to requirements. One-off deployment drives down construction costs by more than 50%.

  • Unified authentication: By using 5G real-name authentication, users can securely access the internal network and cloud applications without a password, whether inside or outside the campus. Other benefits include multi-network unified authentication, consistent access policies, easy source tracing, seamless switching between 5G and Wi-Fi, free mobility, and consistent experience anytime, anywhere.

  • Unified O&M: The unified campus network O&M platform centrally manages 5G, Wi-Fi, and IoT devices and users. Plus, this platform enables visualized, manageable, and controllable topologies, faults, connections, and experience.

This innovative solution has been commercially used at the top-ranked university in Shaanxi Province for several months. According to the university, China Telecom Shaanxi Branch has opened secure, trustworthy 5G real-name authentication capabilities to the campus network. This applies the zero trust security model to terminals accessing the campus network and enhances the access security of the campus network.

Figure 2: the top-ranked university in China's Shaanxi Province the top-ranked university in China’s Shaanxi Province

5G and Wi-Fi convergence enables teachers and students to access campus resources anytime and anywhere, greatly improving teaching and learning efficiency. On top of that, the campus network incorporates diversified IoT technologies, allowing the location and utilization information of various assets on campus to be automatically obtained in real time. As a result, the campus operational efficiency is taken up a gear.

Furthermore, the converged campus network management platform centrally manages 5G, multi-vendor Wi-Fi, and IoT networks, and provides full visibility to networks, devices, connections, traffic, and alarms. In particular, IT engineers are notified of alarm events in real time, greatly simplifying network Operations and Maintenance (O&M), adding intelligence to network maintenance, and accelerating fault response and handling.

According to China Telecom Shaanxi Branch, the university speaks highly of this solution, which has given China Telecom Shaanxi Branch confidence to promote the solution to more than 100 universities throughout the province in the next three years.

Looking ahead, China Telecom Shaanxi Branch will continue to draw on cloud-network integration, stay true to the open and sharing philosophy, pool efforts, aggregate innovations, and increase pathways for win-win outcomes. Doing so will help constantly spawn new technologies, applications, and business models, ultimately bringing a bright digital future together with all stakeholders.

This content is sponsored by Huawei.

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