Authored By: Mr. Yang Chaobin, Director, President of ICT Products & Solutions
Mobile operators are deploying 5G much faster than any other generation of mobile communications technology — and its use among businesses and consumers is growing much faster than expected.
In fact, just four years after commercial deployment, the number of 5G users has exceeded 1 billion — seven times the number of 4G users during the same period. At the same time, 5G has profoundly changed our lives, businesses and society as a whole.
However, with these changes come new demands.
For example, in the consumer field, 5G has greatly boosted the development of short videos. In the 4G era, a person would spend about 0.7 hours watching short videos per day. In the 5G era, this has increased to 1.8 hours. In addition, the proportion of HD videos on mobile networks has grown from 40% to 60%.
New services are emerging, content is constantly being upgraded, and technical breakthroughs, such as glasses-free 3D and VR, are offering unprecedented immersive experiences. These new services pose higher requirements on the capabilities of 5G networks.
5G is also accelerating the digitalization of industries. To date, over 50,000 5G industry applications have been deployed around the world. From an application perspective, consumer applications primarily use downlink traffic, while industry applications mainly use uplink traffic. For example, applications like 3D machine vision quality inspection and backhaul of massive amounts of HD videos require 5G networks with higher uplink transmission capabilities.
When it comes to IoT, 5G must continue to evolve to meet the needs of massive amounts of applications with different transmission rates, levels of power consumption and costs. For example, video surveillance (cameras), wearables and industrial sensors require medium-speed IoT, while applications such as asset stocktaking, logistics tracking, and temperature and humidity monitoring need ubiquitous passive IoT connectivity.
The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI) and large models requires 5G networks to further improve in terms of coverage and latency. Massive amounts of data are needed to train large models, and collaborative device-edge-cloud inference is required to realize real-time, efficient interaction. Therefore, we must build high-quality 5G with full-scenario coverage as well as reliable connectivity to achieve ubiquitous intelligence. This will meet the needs of industries undergoing digital and intelligent transformation.
The road to 5.5G
5.5G is the natural evolution of 5G, enhancing and expanding on 5G capabilities and applications. 5.5G (sometimes also called 5G Advanced) can strengthen application capabilities, including glasses-free 3D, Internet of Vehicles, intelligent IoT and high-end manufacturing. In addition, 5.5G protects investment in 5G live networks.
While introducing new technologies, the smooth evolution to 5.5G can meet the ever-increasing requirements that both consumers and industries place upon communications networks.
Compared with 5G, 5.5G — featuring 10 Gbps downlink, 1 Gbps uplink, 100 billion connections and native intelligence — achieves a 10-time increase in speed and latency.
A downlink rate of 10 Gbps was one of the key capabilities that made up the original vision of 5G. Only when the downlink peak rate reaches 10 Gbps, can consumers enjoy ubiquitous gigabit experience in urban areas.
However, how can 5G networks evolve to deliver 10 Gbps? First, low and mid bands must be combined to achieve x Gbps. Then, to make 10 Gbps possible, new large-bandwidth bands like millimeter wave (mmWave) and upper 6 GHz (U6G) bands must be used in combination with existing spectrum bands.
Take mmWave, for example. According to the full verification we have conducted alongside operators in the field over the past few years, continuous coverage of mmWave in urban areas and hotspots can be achieved with extremely large antenna array (ELAA) technology.
Uplink transmission has always been a key challenge. In terms of uplink experience, 5G networks do not hold any significant advantage over 4G networks. However, uplink traffic dominates new services, especially for business services.
In addition, AI is set to see numerous interactive applications, which will require very high uplink speeds — and this is where 5.5G comes in.
5.5G combines new frequency bands with existing ones. One of these frequency bands is used solely for uplink transmission. This will not only resolve the bottleneck in uplink transmission, but also dramatically reduce the energy consumption of networks.
Only when device costs are sufficiently low can ubiquitous IoT and a fully connected world become a reality. RedCap modules cost less than traditional 5G modules, and have entered commercial use in medium-speed broadband IoT scenarios. However, RedCap modules cannot support hundreds of billions of connections.
Fortunately, 5.5G introduces passive IoT technology. Passive IoT enables devices in the form of tags, costing less than $0.15 (CNY1) each, to work without batteries. A field test has shown that passive IoT improves coverage tenfold compared to traditional RFID technology.
Supported by these new technologies, as well as the ubiquitous coverage of mobile networks and economies of scale in the global industry value chain, hundreds of billions of IoT connections are a possibility.
Bringing 5.5G into reality
The International Telecommunication Union (ITU) released the 6G vision this June. Generally, it takes at least 10 years for a new generation of mobile technology to go from vision to commercial use at scale. However, we cannot afford to wait for 6G to meet the constantly growing demand from consumers and various industries. Therefore, we must look to 5.5G to satisfy the needs of a digital and intelligent society.
From a spectrum perspective, operators must re-farm their existing spectrum for 5G use and secure new large-bandwidth bands to pave the way for 10 Gbps experience. We call on countries worldwide to accelerate the awarding of mmWave spectrum and promote the unified identification of 6 GHz spectrum.
There is clear demand in terms of valuable use cases, and new 5.5G technologies have the potential to effectively meet the corresponding needs. Operators are expected to verify new applications and technologies end to end with industry partners in order to accelerate their commercial use.
R18, the first release of 5.5G, will be frozen in the second quarter of 2024. In the same year, Huawei will launch a complete set of commercial 5.5G network equipment to support the evolution and upgrade of network technology.
This will mark the beginning of the 5.5G era. Are you ready?