LTE-A Pro technology will ‘explode’ this year, Huawei says
Chinese ICT solutions provider Huawei expects to reach 60 commercial networks with its LTE-Advanced Pro-based “4.5G” technology by the end of this year, according to the company’s president of wireless network marketing operation Qiu Heng.
At of the end of 2015, 1 gigabit-per-second transmission had been demonstrated by mobile operators in Canada, Norway, Germany, Kuwait, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, China, Hong Kong and Singapore.
“We are seeing that operators across all regions are interested in the deployment of 4.5G solutions,” Heng said, adding more than 20 operators worldwide have demonstrated or tested the commercial 4.5G technology in collaboration with Huawei since 2014. “We have already started negotiations with some mobile operators for the commercial deployments of 4.5 technology. We believe that this technology will explode in 2016 and that the commercialization of 4.5G will be global.”
Commenting on the future deployment of 4.5G technology in China, the executive said China Mobile has shown interest in the TDD-based technology. “Other operators in China are already talking about the evolution of their 4G networks,” Heng added.
Huawei previously said the introduction of 4.5G technology will allow mobile operators to improve the user experience and support the increase of machine-to-machine communications and the “Internet of Things” as well as new mobile Internet applications, such as virtual-reality glasses and drone technology.
“Because it is an evolution from the existing network, operators can reuse equipment to achieve a higher return on investment with 4.5G,” Heng said.
During a presentation, Huawei also unveiled new 4.5G products under the GigaRadio brand name. The portfolio includes a blade remote radio unit and active antenna unit. The Chinese firm said GigaRadio will be deployed commercially on a large scale this year and will help to accelerate the global adoption of 4.5G.
In October 2015, the 3GPP labeled so-called 4.5G technology as LTE-Advanced Pro. Some aspects of the LTE-Advanced Pro standard include small cell dual-connectivity and architecture, carrier aggregation enhancements, interworking with Wi-Fi, licensed assisted access (at 5 GHz), indoor positioning, single cell-point to multi-point and work on latency reduction.
