PARTNER CONTENT: 2021 is a big year in which 5G is running on the fast track. In accordance with recent GSMA and GSA reports, 464 operators in 139 countries and territories are investing in 5G networks in the form of tests, trials, pilots, planned and actual deployments, and 5G connections will be 2 billion in 2025, around 4 times compared with that of this year. Meanwhile, 89 operators are investing 5G SA network and over 400 types of UE are commercial ready for 5G SA. We can see that the tide is quite high.

However, when it comes to 5G deployment to maximize 5G value and its industrial potential, there are some real pain points for operators: choice on NSA or SA architecture, and the terminal compatibility is also a question; most of sites do not have enough tower space for 5G equipment installation; need to achieve fast nationwide 5G coverage in short time; how to reduce 5G power consumption to save OPEX; and differentiated and fragmented requirements of different industries.

In response to these problems faced by operators and industries, ZTE focuses on three aspects that involve fast 5G network deployment, green mobile network, and profit opportunities in B2B & B2C markets.

Full portfolio products & innovative solutions to enable fast 5G deployment and user experience enhancement

Full portfolio products of ZTE can support SA or NSA or SA/NSA dual-mode architecture with great flexibility, meeting operators’ requirements for their 5G deployment.

To tackle the site problem, ZTE UniSite+ solution for radio site modernization, can provide good coverage and high capacity with greatly reduced tower space occupation and operational cost, by all-in-one outdoor BBU and high-performance dual-band and triple-band Ultra Broadband Radio products. It is estimated that the number of radio units can be reduced by up to 60% and the power consumption by about 30%, saving 1,200 Euro electricity cost per year for an average site.

ZTE has developed a series of innovative solutions further enhancing network performance and maximizing network value, including SuperDSS in fast 5G roll-out and spectrum efficiency improvement, SSB 1+X in 3D coverage enhancement, FAST uplink enhancement technology, Radio Composer in both user experience and network efficiency improvement and etc.

Up to now, ZTE’s 5G footprints have been on more than 40 countries around the world, building 5G flagship networks in countries like Spain, Austria, and Italy.

Energy saving & low power consumption to build green mobile network

Currently, carbon neutrality has become a global consensus. ZTE actively implements the carbon neutralization strategy, promotes energy saving and emission reduction in enterprise production and operation, helps operators in building end-to-end green low carbon networks.

In order to build a green mobile network, ZTE is dedicated to introducing green power, building green sites, and green data centers, to reduce carbon emission. As site energy consumption accounts for a large proportion of energy consumption of the whole network. ZTE keeps innovate in hardware like next-generation chipsets, smaller but more powerful radio units with higher power efficiency. The UniSite+ solution deployed in Spain helps operators to reduce the radio units by 60% and saves power consumption by 30% compared with traditional solutions. And software features such as channels/carriers/symbols shutdown and deep sleep, for example in India, make the total power saving up to 20% during power saving time, over 5% power saving daily for the operator. This case is on the condition that energy saving functions are only activated from 00:00 AM to 06:00 AM.

In addition, PowerPilot, the industry-first service awareness based energy saving solution proposed by ZTE, employs AI as the core technology and takes the initiative to identify different energy saving scenarios, and accordingly matches energy saving policies while accurately predicting network load trend. Thereby, it establishes a coordinated energy saving and network performance model to explore the network energy saving potential. It has been applied in over 30 networks and 800,000 sites globally. In Malaysia, the PowerPilot solution was successfully launched, saving 7 million kWh of power annually.

Win-win cooperation to embrace the profitability of 5G

From the latest Omdia report, the RAN revenue of 2G/3G/4G is declined sharply. In the meanwhile, 5G part is increased greatly. Especially, in B2B market, 5G opens new opportunities for all Industries and the whole society, to drive 12 trillion USD economic activities in 2035.

On one hand, in B2C market, ZTE helps operators to increase the ARPU by precise planning and deploying 5G sites in most valuable regions, by continuous improved network performance, by efficient and intelligent operational strategy deployment for both user experience enhancement and energy saving target. Some figures shows what the operators in China have achieved. 5G now accounts for almost 20 percentage points more traffic than just twelve months ago and average monthly user data usage increases by more than twenty percent. The downtrend of ARPU has been reversed.

Meanwhile, in B2B market, ZTE has developed more than 500 cooperative partners in 15 industries including manufacturing, transportation, energy, ports, and medical care. They have jointly explored over 100 innovative 5G application scenarios and successfully carried out more than 60 demonstration projects worldwide.

Mr. Chao Xiong, GM of RAN Product Overseas Market