Chinese vendor Huawei has already secured 40 contracts to build and operate 5G networks, the company’s rotating CEO, Ken Hu said.
The announcement was made at a keynote speech at the vendor’s 2019 Global Analyst Summit at its headquarter in Shenzhen in southern China.
Huawei signed 23 contracts in Europe, six in Asia-Pacific (APAC), 10 in the Middle East and one in Africa. The Chinese vendor also confirmed it has already shipped over 70,000 5G base stations and expects to have shipped 100,000 by May.
Rival vendors Nokia and Ericsson had publicly announced 16 5G contracts each as of the end of last month. Nokia’s 5G contracts include AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile US, US Cellular, A1, Salt, Telenor Group, Telia Company, TIM San Marino, Vodafone Italy, STC, Rai, NTT Docomo, KT, Optus, and SK Telecom.
Meanwhile, Ericsson’s publicly announced 5G deals include AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile US, US Cellular, Verizon, Swisscom, TDC, Telenor, Vodafone UK, Wind 3, Etisalat, Ooredoo, STC, KT, SK Telecom and Telstra.
“5G comes to us much faster than we have expected,” said Hu in the keynote speech. According to Huawei’s forecasts, by 2025, the world will have 2.8 billion 5G users.
William Xu, Director of the Board and President of the Institute of Strategic Research of Huawei, announced that the company is moving into the era of “Innovation 2.0”.
“The Institute of Strategic Research will be mainly engaged in research into cutting-edge technologies for the next five or more years,” said Xu, “Each year, we invest $300 million to fund academic research in basic science and technologies, and technological innovation. This is an important part of our research efforts.” He also noted that Huawei will work with universities and research institutes to drive innovation in basic technologies.
ZTE, Ericsson, China Mobile conduct 5G-4G VoLTE call
ZTE, the Guangzhou branch of China Mobile and Ericsson have announced a joint demonstration of a VoLTE voice and video call between 5G and 4G smartphones.
The successful call, completed at the end of last month, utilized non-standalone 5G networks provided by different vendors, as well as China Mobile Guangzhou’s existing 4G network.
It used ZTE’s 5G and 4G smartphones for the VoLTE voice and video call, as well as network equipment from ZTE and Ericsson.
At the end of March 2019, Guangdong Branch of China Mobile and ZTE had completed the voice and video call verification between two 5G smartphones
