Huawei emphasized that 2024 will be the first year of commercial 5G-A deployments
SHANGHAI—Chinese vendor Huawei expects 5G-Advanced (5G-A) technology will create new business opportunities, while it will protect previous investments made by operators in the 5G field.
At MWC Shanghai 2024, taking place this week in the Chinese city, Huawei hosted the global launch of 5G-A pioneers program. The event brought together pioneering 5G operators from around the world, including China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom as well as Hong Kong Telecommunications (HKT), UAE-based du and Oman Telecommunications.
At the event, they announced 5G-A plans and discussed how to drive the development of 5G-A networks and how to seize opportunities to create new market space for growth.
During the event, Huawei emphasized that 2024 will be the first year of commercial 5G-A deployments.
David Wang, Huawei’s executive director of the board and chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board, delivered a keynote speech in which he explained the outlook for 5G-A technology.
“5G-A will be the path forward. It will protect vested investment, while creating new business opportunities by expanding business boundaries. As we look towards 2030, the industry as a whole will need to ramp up efforts to reinforce 5G-A technologies and support the healthy development of 5G,” Wang said.
“Huawei looks forward to working hand-in-hand with the industry to build healthy 5G-A ecosystems, upgrade 5G-A standards and share in the benefits of 5G-A development,” he added.
During the event, Huawei and its operator partners jointly announced the 5G-A Pioneers Program and the six specific consensuses they had reached. The Chinese vendor noted that these consensuses will maximize the value of advanced 5G-A capabilities, promote 5G-A development and further advance the industry. The consensuses are: pioneer operators, pioneer cities, business model upgrade, high-quality networks, service innovation and thriving ecosystems.
Earlier this year, during Mobile World Congress 2024 in Barcelona, Spain, Huawei had unveiled eight “5.5G”, or 5G-Advanced innovation practices to help operators build such networks.
Huawei’s eight practices for the 5.5G field cover key technology areas, including antenna evolutions, mmWave bandwidth, network intelligence in the RAN and energy efficiency. During MWC 2024, Huawei also unveiled its 5.5G intelligent core network solution.
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.
