Few issues are extra satisfying than a river cruise – particularly when it’s alongside China’s spectacular river Huangpu in Shanghai. With the town’s dazzling night lightshow reflecting off the water, the historic Bund illuminated in all its glory, and the imposing silhouette of China’s tallest constructing – the Shanghai Tower – rising above the skyline, my night cruise was all the things I had hoped it could be. It’s nearly unimaginable to not be captivated by Shanghai’s distinctive mix of old-world appeal and futuristic ambition, and yearly, 1000’s of vacationers really feel the identical approach.
Shanghai has lengthy prioritised the expansion of its tourism sector, and its Three-12 months Plan for Excessive-High quality Tourism (2025-2027)[i] locations know-how on the forefront of bettering companies to make sure snug, handy journey for guests. The town already affords a dynamic mix of historic, cultural, and pure sights interwoven with putting trendy structure, and in recent times, Shanghai’s cruise economic system has additionally flourished, attracting a various clientele. Nevertheless, conventional cruise service fashions are more and more struggling to ship the personalised and clever experiences that at present’s travellers anticipate.
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Why doesn’t Wi-Fi work properly on a ship?
For at present’s Instagram and Tik-Tok savvy vacationers, the Huangpu River cruise service is presently hindered by two primary challenges: unreliable onboard web connectivity, which detracts from the vacationer expertise, and insufficient translation companies, making it tough to cater to worldwide guests. To beat each these limitations, and improve income and competitiveness, the introduction of AI glasses gives a promising answer, presenting a multi-lingual AI-driven tour information to counterpoint the general customer expertise.
Nevertheless, delivering efficient AI-powered tour steering requires a secure uplink pace of 20 Mbps all through the cruise. Attaining that is sophisticated by the river’s difficult sign surroundings, the place reflections and the substantial sign loss attributable to the cruise ship’s thick metallic construction pose important obstacles. Conventional community options are inadequate for 2 causes: sub-3G bandwidth can not meet the calls for of a whole lot of passengers without delay, and high-frequency indicators are significantly inclined to penetration loss and sign blockages, particularly throughout sharp manoeuvres akin to turning, which frequently results in protection dropouts and diminished service high quality.
Introducing the 5G-A & AI Community
To handle these challenges, China Telecom Shanghai is rolling out a community undertaking for Jiushi Tourism Group in Shanghai, constructed on Huawei’s 5G-A (Superior) & AI know-how. It spans land, river, and low-altitude airspace to make sure an distinctive person expertise, wherever the vacationer is vacationing. On land, a 3CC 5G-A community utilising 2.1 GHz and three.5 GHz bands delivers each uplink and downlink speeds within the gigabit vary, with particular person customers reaching peaks of 4 Gbps downlink and 1 Gbps uplink.
For riverside and onboard environments, the corporate has pioneered an answer combining mmWave base stations alongside the Huangpu River with a 5G-A C-band 3CC distributed community inside cruise ships. LampSite X units are put in inside cabins, whereas mmWave CPEs positioned at every nook of the ship present sturdy backhaul, guaranteeing complete C-band 3CC protection all through the vessel.
This progressive design tackles the distinctive challenges of cruise connectivity by avoiding co-channel interference with onshore websites, using 800 MHz of ultra-wide mmWave bandwidth to assist a whole lot of passengers, and inserting LampSite X items inside cabins to counteract sign loss from thick metallic partitions, including an additional 300 MHz of bandwidth for elevated capability. The strategic placement of mmWave CPEs on the ship’s corners maintains line-of-sight connections whatever the ship’s orientation, with sign aggregation guaranteeing uninterrupted transmission. Discipline checks have demonstrated spectacular outcomes, with downlink speeds in cabins reaching 3.1 Gbps and uplink speeds peaking at 260 Mbps on 5G-A units.
For low-altitude air area, China Telecom Shanghai applies mmWave on the Longhua Airport low-altitude take a look at base to assist a variety of airspace functions, together with identification of drones and sturdy low-altitude communications, in addition to offering dependable connectivity for actions akin to medical rescue, meals supply, safety operations, and logistics.
Reside tourism information and translation companies through AI glasses
In a bid to supply vacationers with absolutely immersive multilingual guides and real-time translation, China Telecom Shanghai has launched AI-glasses leases on Huangpu River cruise ships, bringing a brand new wave of technological innovation to river tourism.
Throughout my cruise on the “Junzilan” (Silverfish) cruise ship – a part of Huangpu River Cruise – I had a possibility to strive these out and was extraordinarily impressed. The AI glasses had been just like sun shades in dimension, form and weight, and when trying up on the Shanghai Tower, as an illustration, the AI recognised what I used to be taking a look at and proceeded to supply me with cultural info. The glasses projected info in regards to the constructing as an ‘overlay’ on the picture in English, together with the spectacular stats of the tower being 632m excessive with 128 storeys.
Throughout peak vacation intervals, Shanghai’s cruises can carry over 30,000 passengers in a single day (greater than 4 million a yr). This substantial footfall highlights the numerous market potential of worldwide tourism for Shanghai, with the prospect of producing annual revenues within the tens of tens of millions of yuan for cruise operators.
Following the success of AI-glasses leases on cruise ships, China Telecom Shanghai now plans to repurpose telephone cubicles throughout the town to supply citywide AI-glasses leases. This initiative goals to carry a contemporary, technology-driven enhance to Shanghai’s city tourism, making immersive, multilingual experiences accessible to guests all through the town.
On the current MWC Shanghai 2025, the Huangpu River Cruise showcase turned a significant speaking level of the occasion, attracting widespread consideration from each trade consultants and attendees. It highlighted how superior 5G-A & AI applied sciences might be seamlessly built-in into the tourism sector, providing passengers high-speed connectivity and immersive, multilingual experiences.
Impressed by this achievement, a number of main carriers rapidly introduced plans to implement their very own riverside and offshore community protection options, aiming to duplicate and construct upon the success seen in Shanghai. This wave of innovation is anticipated to additional elevate the usual of connectivity and digital companies accessible to vacationers and residents alike, marking a major step ahead for sensible tourism and community infrastructure growth.
[i] https://english.shanghai.gov.cn/en-Newest-WhatsNew/20250225/b149c95613f348f191d9dac366de8d18.html
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