LIVE FROM MWL UNWRAPPED: Nokia senior adviser and Bell Labs fellow Harri Holma backed improvements in mobile network uplink under development to deliver in-demand enterprise use cases, support AI and bring capabilities closer to those found in fixed networks.     

During his keynote discussing the next five years of 5G, he highlighted a current industry focus on improving uplink capabilities partly to meet demand for improved real time interactive applications.

He noted a lot of the early 5G speed improvements were on the downlink side and “if you look at uplink the improvement in terms of data has only been moderate” with this now a specific focus.

“We believe enterprise use cases, FWA use cases, AI in the device, and real time interactive use cases will need better uplink connectivity,” the expert added.

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For industry, Holma (pictured, left) pointed to demand for video surveillance or video monitoring applications among other applications. In terms of improving FWA he noted wireless was “clearly behind fixed” when it comes to uplink capability.

For AI, he added there was “some processing in the device, but also some happening in the cloud” so when performing image editing, for example, “that will go from your device to the cloud and AI processing will be done there”.

“So AI in the device may be one of the drivers as to why better uplink will be needed”. 

Although highlighting the need for further evolution, Holma said the industry should be “proud of what has been happening in the last five years in technology evolution,” citing vast improvements on data rates in countries including India.

Other success highlighted by the expert in the first years of 5G include in providing fixed wireless access and facilitating various enterprise applications.