The high bandwidth (peak 20Gbps) and low latency (1ms-level) of 5G networks are opening new interactive dimensions for contact centers. According to ABI Research, by 2026, the number of 5G-enabled customer service terminal devices (including smartphones, AR glasses, and IoT devices) worldwide will exceed 800 million, and traffic processed via 5G edge computing (MEC) for real-time video customer service will account for 12% of total customer service traffic.
The most typical application scenario is Video IVR (Visual IVR). Traditional touch-tone menus are being replaced by rich-media interactive interfaces based on 5G networks. For example, British telecom operator EE's "Video First" service allows customers calling the service hotline to see a dynamic, interactive menu on their phone screens, enabling bill inquiries, fault reporting, and other operations through tapping, swiping, and voice commands. The entire process is handled by edge servers deployed at 5G base stations, with end-to-end latency under 50 milliseconds, delivering an experience as smooth as a local app.
Another frontier is AR-assisted remote fault diagnosis. In industrial after-sales service, field technicians wearing AR glasses (such as Microsoft HoloLens 2) transmit first-person video streams in real time to back-end expert agents via 5G. Experts can overlay 3D annotations, arrows, and text instructions on the video stream to guide technicians through disassembly and repair of complex equipment. Germany's Siemens deployed this solution in its gas turbine remote maintenance service, reducing Mean Time to Repair (MTTR) by 60% and saving approximately €2,000 per trip.
GlobalConnect is collaborating with multiple telecom operators to launch "Intelligent Customer Service Edge Node" services based on 5G MEC. This solution preloads core AI models such as ASR (Automatic Speech Recognition), TTS (Text-to-Speech), and NLU (Natural Language Understanding) onto edge servers, reducing voice interaction response times from 200–300ms for cloud calls to 30–50ms for local processing, significantly improving real-time conversation fluency. At the same time, all customer data is desensitized at the edge node before being uploaded to the central cloud, effectively addressing data compliance challenges in sensitive industries such as finance and healthcare.