2024 marks the fifth year of 5G commercial use and the first year of 5.5G commercial use. Five years into commercial use, 5G has made remarkable progress in the aspects of consumers, homes, and industries. Ubiquitous high-quality network construction brings high-speed Internet access everywhere.
Fixed wireless access (FWA) effectively bridges the digital divide and provides a second choice in addition to optical migration. The construction of tens of thousands of industry private networks ushers in a wave of digital and intelligent transformation of industries. Looking ahead, 5.5G networks with multi-dimensional capabilities are on the way. Global Mobile Broadband Forum 2024 (MBBF 2024) titled “5.5G Leads the Mobile AI era” is right around the corner. In the Mobile AI era, 5.5G TDD, which delivers “Fast for More”, will help construct an intelligent network in the future intelligent world.
Prosperous 5G Business Accelerates Application Innovation as Mobile Networks Enter the 5.5G Commercialization
In the past five years, the number of global 5G users has exceeded 1.2 billion. The DOU of 5G has increased by two to five times compared with that of 4G, driving operators’ ARPU up by 10% to 25%. The large capacity, high speed, and low latency of 5G networks are pushing videos towards higher resolution. Videos of 720p or higher resolution account for 75% of all videos. With the large capacity of 5G networks, FWA has become one of the most successful applications in wireless communications. 60% of global 5G operators have chosen FWA and achieved business success. In addition, 5G is the foundation of next-generation industry private networks, which 67% of global operators choose to deploy. All these depend on 5G’s TDD large-bandwidth spectrum and cross-generation solutions. Today, faster, simpler, and smarter 5.5G networks that contains multi-dimensional capabilities are accelerating to be deployed. This supports the booming mobile AI applications that already entered our life and production.
Mobile AI Leads to Explosive Increase of Connections in both Quantity and Quality, Demanding Multi-dimensional Capabilities of 5.5G Networks
The Mobile AI era is here. The increasing adoption of Generative AI in the field of content is leading to the explosive growth of mobile traffic, requiring network pipes to provide an over-10 Gbps capacity. The popularization of diversified AI terminals, including AI mobile phones, AI glasses, AI translators, and embodied intelligence, brings a multifold increase in the quantity and quality of connections, demanding larger capacity and higher reliability of mobile networks. It can be estimated that, as global intelligent transformation spreading to vehicles, more than 1 billion vehicles will be connected with a low latency of 20ms@90%. As AI accelerates the intelligent transformation of industries, multi-dimensional connection capabilities is required. Applications require latency to decrease from 50ms to 4ms @ 99.99%, and calls for a Gbps-level uplink rate. Low-power positioning also becomes a key capability of 5.5G networks. In the future, the quantity and quality of connections will continue to grow. It is believed that the monetization of multi-dimensional network capabilities through guaranteed rate and guaranteed latency will be the focus of 5G-A networks.
MBBF Warm-up: New Trends in the Mobile AI Era and Their Impact on Evolution to 5.5G
At the upcoming MBBF, Huawei will demonstrate the new dynamics in the Mobile AI era and the arising new requirements for networks, as well as toC/toH/toB cases and the latest trends that help operators achieve business success. On October 30, Huawei will host the 5.5G Industry Development Summit and 2024 Global FWA Evolution Roundtable, bringing together industry partners to discuss the evolution of 5.5G networks and core services. Topics for discussion include how to align 5.5G network capabilities with the applications in the mobile AI era to help operators increase commercial success. A high-quality TDD network on top of multi-band convergence is still the basis for delivering the multi-dimensional network capabilities. With this, what technologies can be used to achieve efficient network deployment and operations? Huawei looks forward to discussing all these topics with industry partners to maximize the full potential of the 5.5G industry.
The 15th Global Mobile Broadband Forum, with a tagline of ‘5.5G Leads Mobile AI Era’, will run from October 30 to 31 in Istanbul, Türkiye. It will be hosted by Huawei with support from our industry partners GSMA and GTI. Together with operators, vertical industry leaders, and ecosystem partners, we will share the industry’s latest advancements and explore new opportunities. Industry stakeholders will discuss how to achieve 5.5G business success in the Mobile AI era, and leverage the success of 5G to attain even greater achievements with 5.5G. For more information, please visit MBBF2024 at: https://www.huawei.com/en/events/mbbf2024.