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5.5G is the natural evolution of 5G. With a tenfold increase in network capabilities, 5.5G is becoming hugely popular among industries. At the 5G Advanced: Completing the Enterprise Opportunity forum during MWC Barcelona 2024, Huawei proposed that 5.5G will enable industries to accelerate both digital and intelligent transformation.
By Liu Kang, President of the ICT Marketing & Solution Sales Dept, Huawei
5G has achieved significant success since its commercial use. By the end of 2023, 294 commercial 5G networks had been deployed worldwide, serving more than 1.4 billion 5G subscribers and establishing 5G as a major engine for carriers' revenue growth. In 2023, 90% of carriers that invested in 5G saw revenue growth and achieved positive business cycles. 5G has helped industries go digital, and has been used at scale in more than 10 high-value scenarios, including 5G-enabled machine vision and 5G-enabled remote control. 5G has also become a new engine driving the development of the digital economy.
The industry is undergoing tremendous changes, making it essential to upgrade connectivity technologies. The rapid development of generative AI presents huge opportunities, driving the exponential growth of traffic.
In the B2B domain, 5G has been integrated with core production activities and glasses-free 3D technology has reached an inflection point in terms of experience. The emergence of new services, connections, and experience is bringing unprecedented opportunities, driving leading carriers to shift from traffic monetization to the monetization of deterministic experience and convergent new services. These changes place higher requirements on the capabilities of existing networks.
5.5G is the natural evolution of 5G. 5.5G delivers higher speeds, lower latency, higher network reliability, wider connectivity, and native intelligence, allowing it to meet the higher requirements of communications networks in the future.
Evolution towards 5.5G is a continuous process. In the first phase, TDD 3CC aggregation above 260 MHz is able to achieve a peak rate of at least 5 Gbps. This has enabled wireless networks to deliver a deterministic experience for people-connected services for the first time. In the second phase, a downlink peak rate of 10 Gbps can be achieved.
5.5G networks that deliver a deterministic experience will significantly improve consumer perception. Voice and 2D videos used to be the main methods of content interaction, but immersive 3D videos, XR, and holography are developing into the major forms of future content interaction. This upgraded experience will raise the bar for connectivity. Previously, services have generally required a latency of 100 ms, but the latency required for future services will be as low as 10 to 20 ms. This tenfold decrease in latency means that 5.5G networks enabled by 3CC aggregation will be integral to network deployment in order to provide a better experience. The high bandwidth delivered by 3CC aggregation will give full play to its strengths in transportation hubs, such as high-speed railway stations, subway stations, and airports, and venues like commercial offices, stadiums, tourist attractions, and urban villages.
In the home market, FWA will continue evolving towards FWA2, leading to the emergence of three new application scenarios. First, FWA Pro can deliver a bandwidth of 1 2 Gbps, meeting the demand for high-speed services while providing a deterministic experience. This has allowed home users to enjoy better services, including ultra-HD videos and VR applications. Second, the cost-effective FWA Lite is primarily intended for markets evolving from 4G to 5G and new markets without connectivity. This solution will help carriers obtain new users, but help release 4G spectrum resources to 5G as home users migrate from 4G to 5G, thus improving network efficiency. Third, FWA Biz is a solution for enterprises across different industries. Built on FWA, the solution can achieve 99.99% network stability and 20-ms low latency. This has made it easier for carriers to replace microwave private lines and low-speed copper private lines, accelerating the interconnectivity of small- and medium-sized enterprises.
With 5.5G, carriers can monetize network capabilities across more dimensions and provide differentiated packages based on deterministic experience. Carriers are now able to meet diversified customer demands and increase their ARPU.
As wireless networks continue to evolve, they will be able to deliver a greater range of services. Networks will also inevitably become more complex, bringing challenges for carriers in terms of offering simplified O&M and lower energy consumption while delivering diversified services and guaranteed service experience. The 5.5G intelligent solution, IntelligentRAN, will help carriers build autonomous driving networks that feature intelligent and simplified O&M, intelligent network optimization, and intelligent service operations.
5.5G drives IoT development, as it is capable of breaking the limits of 5G in some scenarios. 5.5G also improves network performance and connectivity and reduces costs, meaning that IOT-related goals that cannot be achieved with 5G become achievable. This makes all things connected possible, enabling carriers to maximize the commercial value of 5.5G.
5.5G is expanding private network services from industry private lines only to private lines and ICT services, thus accelerating industry digital transformation. The 5G private network and private line market is developing fast and is set to reach US$20 billion by 2025. 5G private lines are extensively used across industries thanks to fast, low-cost deployment. 5.5G can further improve the network performance of private networks, including guaranteed 300 Mbps and millisecond-level latency. 5.5G can also be integrated with networking, computing, cloud, IoT, and other industry requirements to open up more possibilities for industry digital transformation. 5.5G supports an uplink transmission rate of 1 Gbps for a single user. This can meet the requirements of interactive, immersive services such as AI training data cloudification, cloud photos, and cloud conferencing. In industrial production, 5.5G can enable services such as AI quality inspections, security monitoring, and remote control. And in healthcare, the low latency and high reliability of 5.5G can make telemedicine applications possible.
With the enhancement of 5.5G capabilities, related technical applications are expanding from enterprises' auxiliary systems to core production systems. 5G serves as an enabler and accelerator in the digital transformation of various industries. For example, 5G has been applied in more than 400 mines in countries around the world, including China, Thailand, Brazil, and South Africa, with more than 20 carriers now providing 5G services for mines. 5.5G technologies bring new momentum to the digital upgrade of industries, with 5.5G supporting ultra-large uplink rate of 1 Gbps and latency as low as 4 ms. These features can support enterprises' core production processes such as high-density quality inspection and flexible production, greatly enhancing the productivity of enterprises. In the mining industry, for example, the length of a fully-mechanized mining surface in a coal mine ranges from 100 to 300 meters. Previously, it was difficult to clearly see the entire surface. However, 5.5G wireless access technology can be employed to provide network coverage for underground mining surfaces and areas in which explosions are set off, solving issues related to fiber disconnection and data collection failures. Low-frequency and large-bandwidth resources are used to backhaul videos from more than 100 cameras, and AI is used to stitch these videos into a panoramic video of the mining surface, providing a comprehensive and clear picture of underground operations.
As the automotive industry becomes more autonomous and electric, the number of connected vehicles worldwide is soaring. By the end of 2023, the number stood at 350 million, and 45% of all vehicles on sale today support autonomous driving at L2 or higher. These trends will see the traffic of connected vehicles soar by 100 times, and the data of usage (DOU) in vehicles to exceed 100 GB. These developments will require the support of high-speed 5G networks. To ensure transportation safety and improve efficiency, vehicle-road synergy requires networks with 99% reliability and 20-ms latency. This is where 5.5G comes in. New E2E technologies have already been verified in Shanghai, where a 1-km demonstration route boasts reliable 5.5G networks with stable latency. With vehicle-road synergy supported by 5.5G's sensing capabilities, drivers no longer need to worry about complex traffic situations, while accidents caused by blind spots and other unexpected factors can be prevented. It is forecast that traffic management efficiency will improve by 30% and average commute times will be 20% faster.
Global carriers have reached an industry-wide consensus and are actively deploying 5.5G. During the Global Mobile Broadband Forum in October 2023, 13 world-leading carriers jointly announced the launch of the Global 5.5G Network Pioneers, marking 5.5G's transition from technical verification to commercial deployment. At the 17th Telecom Review Leaders Summit in December 2023, experts and representatives from authoritative organizations and enterprises jointly announced the first year of 5.5G deployment. These organizations include ITU, du and e& (UAE), Ooredoo (Qatar), Vodafone Oman, Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia. Over the past year, leading carriers from the Middle East, Europe, and Asia Pacific (including China), have fully verified TDD 3CC on live networks and started commercial deployment.
Close industry collaboration and ecosystem collaboration are also key to unleashing the value of 5.5G. Huawei stands ready to work with industry and ecosystem partners to explore its extensive applications and provide end-to-end intelligent 5.5G solutions. Together, let's usher in a new era of 5.5G-enabled intelligent connectivity and applications so that all participants will benefit from the development of 5.5G and achieve shared success.