At its 5.5G Industry Summit during MWC Barcelona 2024, the Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) launched an initiative "Embracing a prosperous 5G-Advanced era". The GSMA 5G Futures Community has grown to include nearly 60 operators and industry partners, showing that the 5.5G ecosystem is becoming more mature to take this technology to a new stage worldwide.
Evolution to 5.5G is already an industry consensus. This echoes the thriving development of the GSMA 5G Futures Community, which has seen its memberships increased to 58 leading operators, major equipment vendors, and industry partners, from just 19 when it was established one year ago at MWC Barcelona 2023. This shows the concerted efforts from the entire ICT industry to promote the progress of 5.5G.
At the summit, the GSMA also released a white paper "5G-Advanced: Shaping the future of operator services". The white paper states that the first-wave 5.5G deployment will start in 2024. It also stresses that 5.5G will improve the coverage, mobility, speeds, and energy efficiency of 5G networks to create new value for operators and their customers.
John Gao, President of Huawei's 5.5G Domain, was invited to speak at the summit. During his speech, Gao briefed the service development and business value of 5.5G, and unveiled Huawei's multipath solutions for evolution to 5.5G.