LIVE FROM HUAWEI GLOBAL MBB FORUM 2021, DUBAI: Huawei rotating chairman Ken Hu (pictured) used his keynote to urge the industry to step up efforts to deliver relevant 5G use cases for enterprises and continue to enhance networks to meet the high-performance requirements of AR and VR applications.

Beyond smartphones, he argued operators have not adequately addressed industry’s 5G networking problems and need to work out more sustainable business models.

Huawei research shows there are more than 10,000 B2B projects around the world, more than 50 per cent of which are in China.

Hu highlighted some of the mobile sector’s key achievements, with 176 commercial 5G networks globally, 1.5 million base stations and 500 million next-generation users.

“We should be proud of what we have achieved together, but we have more work to do.”

The industry originally thought 5G would redefine the user experience, he noted, explaining the technolgy is “ten-times faster than 4G, and we are starting to see many exciting new applications like 5G VR and 360-degree broadcasting, but adoption is still low”.

To seize the massive AR and VR opportunity in the consumer and business sectors, he believes operators must prepare to offer 10-millisecond latency and at least 4Gb/s downlink speeds. “These are the basic requirements. Current networks cannot support these.”

Hu estimates the pandemic accelerated digital transformation by about seven years, with 81 per cent of enterprises using cloud-based applications.