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5.5G will fill in the gaps of 5G and enhance the key features of eMBB, URLLC, and mMTC. What features and benefits will 5.5G offer in practice?
By Wu Hequan, Academician, Chinese Academy of Engineering; Director, Advisory Committee of the Internet Society of China; Director, China Standardization Expert Committee
Global 5G deployment is now well underway, with more than 230 5G networks already in commercial use and more than 1 billion 5G users accounting for 12% of all mobile users worldwide. This number is remarkable, because it means that in just three years since the start of commercial deployment, 5G has as many users as 4G had after five years. Operators have deployed tens of thousands of private networks for the 5GtoB market and by the end of 2022, 2.312 million 5G base stations had been built in China. That is 21.3% of all base stations in the country and 60% of all 5G base stations worldwide.
China now has 561 million 5G users, accounting for 33.3% of all mobile users in the country and 56% of all 5G users worldwide. China is also home to more than half the world's 5G private networks.
The high download rates 5G enables have driven global mobile data traffic to double for two consecutive years. However, the increased speeds delivered by 5G are not really perceivable when using average consumer applications. They are also not adequate for industrial applications. In terms of user experience, 5G has not shown obvious advantages over 4G. Both 4G and 5G high-end handSet can support 2K screen resolution without any obvious differences in fluency. 5G's ability to support simultaneous access for more users is also an often-ignored factor in scenarios other than large venues, like stadiums. Likewise, its low latency is rarely noticed outside applications such as IoV and XR. XR services that require a headset need 5G's high bandwidth, but existing 5G networks can barely support XR video experiences. At the same time, although 5G has been successfully applied to applications like machine vision and remote control, it has not been effective in bringing the industrial Internet to the next level. In many industrial scenarios, massive MIMO, one of the most prominent features of 5G, rarely comes into play, because industrial applications need more: larger uplink, lower latency, more determinacy, higher security, higher reliability, more massive connectivity, higher-precision positioning, and lower power consumption. Lightweight and low cost is also required for ubiquitous connectivity.
To stimulate 5G's potential and keep pace with market growth, the industry is turning to 5G-Advanced (5.5G) as a stepping stone to 6G. 5.5G primarily enhances three of 5G's features: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications (mMTC). This improves the technology's capabilities in broadband, ubiquitousness, eco-friendliness, and intelligence.