A linguistic robot made by China Telecom interacts with audience on Saturday in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province. Photo: IC

China Telecommunications Corp (China Telecom) teamed up with US multinational conglomerate General Electric Co (GE) to push forward the integration of industrial Internet, the companies said in a joint announcement Tuesday.

Under the cooperation plan, GE will provide its software platform Predix to allow China Telecom build a data platform which will help industries become connected, according to a presentation during GE's Minds and Machines forum held Tuesday in Beijing. Predix, which will combine cloud-based platform and industrial companies, will cover various industries such as aviation, oil and gas, manufacturing and healthcare. 

Industrial Internet is a term coined by GE to refer to the integration of physical machinery with networked sensors and software.

"The ability to transform the information into better asset utilization, better fuel performance, and better safety for airlines or utilities or hospitals, that is the industrial Internet all about," said Jeffrey R. Immelt, GE's CEO, during the forum.

Immelt noted that the industrial Internet includes five aspects. While the Internet will help build a living network of the world's machines, data and people, software such as advanced sensors and controls will increase system intelligence, he said.

In addition, deep domain on big industrial data will help generate more analytics and the industrial Internet will connect people at work while supporting more intelligent design, Immelt said.

China Telecom, one of the country's three big telecom firms, unveiled a white paper on "Internet Plus" in May, under which the Internet and traditional industries are integrated through online platforms and technology, the Xinhua News Agency reported May 13.

The company plans to invest 80 billion yuan ($12.9 billion) each year to establish an industrial circle for the strategy, according to Xinhua.

Embracing Internet technologies, for example, will help the company accelerate the construction of all optical fiber networks, which are expected to bring the proportion of optical fiber users to 80 percent by 2017, Yang Jie, executive director of China Telecom, said during the forum Tuesday.

The new cooperation between China Telecom and GE is seen as a step in carrying forward the country's "Made in China 2025" plan, a strategy to upgrade the manufacturing sector by introducing advanced technologies such as big data and cloud computing, Xiang Ligang, a Beijing-based analyst specializing in telecommunications, told the Global Times Tuesday.

"Building a giant network is a prerequisite for Internet-connected manufacturing, and China Telecom could play an important role in that," Xiang said, noting that the company could not only expand its high-speed networks to connect factories and production lines but also improve its data storage and processing capabilities for better logistics and production solutions.

China Telecom is the largest fixed line operator in the world, which has over 140 million access lines in service, according to the company's annual report for 2014 published in March. The company is also the largest broadband operator with 100 million subscribers and recorded about 324 million yuan in operating revenues in 2014, as the report showed.

"GE has already accumulated experience in connecting software with industries such as aviation and healthcare, which will help China Telecom build more sophisticated analytical models in data processing," Xiang said.

Chinese companies should have an open mind in modernizing manufacturing and learn from different concepts such as industrial Internet coined by GE and Industry 4.0 initiated by the German government, said He Jun, analyst from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

"The core of those plans is helping manufacturers gain competitive edge while reducing costs, which will make them more efficient," He noted.