Huawei had previously said that it planned to launch a complete set of commercial 5.5G network equipment this year
MWC Barcelona- Chinese vendor Huawei launched what it claimed to be the world’s first “5.5G” intelligent core network during an event at MWC 2024, taking place this week in Barcelona, Spain.
The announcement was made by George Gao, president of Huawei cloud core network product line. Gao also noted that 2024 will be the first year for commercialization of 5.5G or 5G-Advanced.
In his speech, the executive also noted that “New Calling” technology was put into commercial use for serving up to 50 million subscribers across 31 provinces in China last year. The technology has also been verified in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia Pacific, and is set to be commercialized in these regions in during this year, he added.
“The industry’s first New Calling-Advanced solution launched by Huawei embraces enhanced intelligence and data channel-based interaction capabilities; it is taking us to a multi-modal communication era and helping operators reconstruct their service layout. In addition, Huawei also introduced the Multi-modal Communication Function (MCF) to allow users to control digital avatars through voice during calls, delivering a more personalized calling experience,” the vendor said.
In a separate session, Li Peng, Huawei’s corporate senior vice president and president of ICT sales and service, discussed how carriers can achieve business success in 5G and how 5.5G technology will further unlock the potential of networks and create new growth opportunities.
“5G is on the right path to business success,” said Li. “5G began commercialization in 2019, and over the past five years, it has already gained 1.5 billion 5G users around the world. It took nine years for 4G to make this happen. Currently, 20% of global mobile subscribers are using 5G. These users generate 30% of all mobile traffic and contribute to 40% of mobile service revenue.”
Li added, “5.5G is entering commercial use in 2024, and as 5.5G, AI, and cloud converge, carriers can unlock the potential of new applications and capabilities.”
He went on to say that carriers should focus on high-quality networking, multi-dimensional monetization, emerging services and generative AI to grasp these opportunities.
The Chinese vendor also highlighted that 5G has been also adopted among many industries. In China, more than 50,000 private 5G network use cases have entered commercial use in over 50 industries. “The new capabilities of 5.5G, including deterministic latency, precise positioning, and passive IoT, are expected to create even more opportunities for carriers in the B2B market,” said Huawei.
Huawei believes that previous investments made by operators to deploy 5G network infrastructure will be protected with the future launch of 5G-Advanced. Huawei’s president of wireless solution, Cao Ming, previously said during a media roundtable at Huawei’s 14th Global Mobile Broadband Forum (MBBF), held In October 2023 in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates.
The executive said that 5G-Advanced networks will not require large investments by operators in new network architecture and will be launched using 5G Standalone (SA) networks. He also said that Huawei is working with its partners to make sure that future 5.5G applications, devices and services will be fully compatible with current 5G networks.
Huawei had previously said that it planned to launch a complete set of commercial 5.5G network equipment in 2024.
