[Mexico City, Mexico, May 28, 2025] During the 2025 Latin America GSMA Mobile 360, Bob Cai, president of Huawei Latin America Carrier Business Dept, delivered a keynote speech entitled "Advancing the LATAM ICT Infrastructure for AI Era". He emphasized that AI is driving global industry transformation, governments, regulators, operators, and industry partners in LATAM can work together to leverage Chinese successful network construction experience to continuously advance the ICT network infrastructure to cope with the opportunities and challenges of the AI era.
2024 is the first year of AI scale application. By the end of 2024, the number of global AI LLMs (Large Language Models) has exceeded 1,300, and the number of AI device shipments and applications has increased by 10 times within a year. As a pioneer in AI development, China has initially built a relatively comprehensive AI application eco-system. Currently, China has launched about 500 AI LLMs. Deepseek is popular around the world with its advantages of low cost, high performance, and open-source, promoting the implementation and application of AI LLMs.
In LATAM, AI development is in process. Brazil, Chile, and some other countries have published AI strategy. According to a third-party report, AI investment in Latin America will reach US$4.72 billion by 2030. With the further development of AI, AI applications will gradually penetrate into individuals, homes, and enterprises, which will pose higher requirements on networks, such as more traffic, lower latency, and higher speed.
Bob Cai said, " AI will be just a dream without a robust ICT infrastructure. In Latin America, it is necessary to advancing the construction of ICT network infrastructure continuously in the AI era. Firstly, 5G and fiber is the foundation for intelligent connectivity of ICT network infrastructure. Secondly, we need to build a cloud-network collaboration infrastructure to meet the requirements of central training and edge inference brought by AI. In addition, the autonomous driving network solution can help better manage and optimize network resources, which can improve O&M efficiency. Finally, the application of AI technology can help telecom operators develop more convenient and intelligent services, thereby increasing revenue.
China has emerged in the development of AI because it has built a strong network foundation over the past years. China has built the world's largest high-quality 5G network since 2019. Up to now, the number of 5G sites in China has reached 4.4 million, the penetration rate of 5G users has reached 70%, and the DOU is over 20G. In addition, China has achieved 100% FTTH home coverage with gigabit users accounting for 32%. And since 2024, China started the "10G city" broadband development plan.
In recent years, 5G and FTTH have been developing continuously in Latin America. Currently, 50,000 5G sites have been built, with an average user penetration rate of 9%, FTTH penetration rate of 34%, and gigabit users of 3%. But compared with China and the world, there is still a huge room for improvement. According to Bob Cai, Latin America can continuously build the ICT network foundation by leveraging China's successful network development experience. In terms of 5G, it’s necessary to promote the industry policies, carry out moderately advanced network construction, and improve experience to develop innovative services. For the FTTH development, it’s suggested to accelerate cable to fiber migration and gigabit upgrading, and explore new scenarios such as live streaming, gaming, and home care services.
Currently, many new services and practice explorations are emerging in the AI application field around the world. While advancing the ICT infrastructure construction, Latin America will accelerate the prosperity and development of the local AI application ecosystem by introducing global excellent AI applications experience. Finally, Bob Cai called on Huawei to join hands with Latin American operators and industry partners to embrace the AI era and continuously advance ICT infrastructure construction, moving towards to a digital and intelligence LATAM.