5.5G Is Now, Building an Intelligent World Together

[Barcelona, Spain, February 27, 2024] During MWC Barcelona 2024, a key opinion leader (KOL) roundtable themed "Better Together, Bring 5.5G into Reality" was successfully held, gathering 30 KOLs around the world to discuss 5G and 5.5G development. At the roundtable, Sven Zhu, Vice President of Huawei Wireless Marketing, delivered a keynote speech entitled "5.5G Is Now, Building an Intelligent World Together." In the speech, Zhu explained how 5G had already begun to show its value in changing society, and that 5.5G will bring greater social and commercial value by further enabling the connection of people, homes, things, industries, and vehicles. He added that 5.5G is thriving globally with key elements, including standards, spectrum, terminals, business models, and products, already in place.

5G Development Has Entered the Fast Lane

In the four years since its commercial adoption, 5G has changed people's lives in profound ways. For instance, 5G makes travelling more enjoyable than ever. On the Beijing-Shanghai high-speed railway, passengers can watch HD videos anytime. 5G also benefits other industries such as healthcare by enabling lossless transmission of UHD videos, which helps shorten the average disease diagnosis time from 15 minutes to only 25 seconds.

Additionally, 5G helps protect wildlife and the environment. In Northern Europe, particularly Norway, the number of wild salmon has plummeted due to being outcompeted by the invasive humpback salmon. Huawei and Norway's BJFF, a local association of hunters and anglers, partnered up to implement real-time underwater fish recognition through the use of 5G and other new technologies. The recognition accuracy reaches 99.99% and reduces manual labor by 90%.

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The 5.5G Industry Chain Is Ready

5.5G will further unlock the full potential of 5G. Compared with 5G, 5.5G will provide 10-times enhanced capabilities, including 10 Gbps downlink, 1 Gbps uplink, and 100 billion connections. In addition, 5.5G will enable three new capabilities: harmonized communication and sensing (HCS), passive IoT (P-IoT), and native intelligence.

With the joint efforts of global operators in the past three years, 5.5G standards, spectrum, terminals, business models, and products are now ready. In addition, 5.5G applications are maturing and extending from basic communications to all-scenario connections of people, homes, things, industries, and vehicles.

Connected people: AI will overcome the limits of language, costs, and terminal devices in content generation and result in unparalleled increases in network traffic. AI-generated content (AIGC) will phase out professionally-generated content (PGC) and user-generated content (UGC) to generate huge volumes of new content. In just 15 months since ChatGPT's launch in November 2022, text-based image and video generation have followed in quick succession. AIGC is breaking the wall between the physical and digital worlds and will lead to hundreds-fold increases in content. At the same time, AI accelerates the adoption of new terminal devices. For example, with AI algorithms, 2D content can be converted to 3D HD content in seconds. At the 19th Asian Games in Hangzhou, 3D HD live-streaming of the event resulted in traffic growth of over 150%.

Connected homes: Home scenarios have diverse connection requirements. For example, cloud gaming requires low latency, while VR/AR 8K TV requires heavy traffic. In the Middle East, 40% of homes have more than six devices, which is why Huawei and du UAE have worked together to launch the world's first 5.5G smart home. Such smart homes excellently showcase the smart lifestyles that 10 Gbps 5G networks and mature CPE ecosystems can make a reality.

Connected things: Connectivity should be in all scenarios and for everything. In China's Shandong province, 5.5G-based protection of distributors and circuit breakers allows faults to be isolated quickly to restore power supply, reducing the average annual power outage duration from 5.4 hours to just 25 minutes. In addition, RedCap technology is used in drones and robots to automatically inspect power generation equipment, improving the inspection efficiency by 24 times compared to traditional inspection methods. As the RedCap industry matures, more RedCap devices are being put into commercial use around the world. In logistics companies such as Ouyeel Shanghai, P-IoT tags are installed on each asset to transmit data to a platform in real time when the asset enters and exits warehouses, thus enabling automated and safe asset stocktaking. In the consumer industry, for example laundry, clothes can be sorted using P-IoT tags to enable a visualized laundry process that both simplifies clothing item management while also improving customer service.

Connected industries: 5.5G's use in industrial scenarios goes beyond just assisting production. Instead, it is being included in core production processes to enable in-depth industrial digitalization. At Great Wall Motors Exquisite Automotive, each stage of the production line enjoys wireless connectivity thanks to the low latency and high reliability of 5.5G. This gives production lines much greater flexibility and enables quick changeover, resulting in an increase in annual productivity of US$100 million. In Midea Jingzhou, 5.5G has been integrated into real production scenarios, such as cloud PLC, AI vision supervision, AGV dispatch, and warehouse transportation. Thanks to the large uplink and low latency capabilities of 5.5G, it takes less than 7 seconds on average to make a washing machine, and the faulty part detection rate reaches up to 99%, thus greatly improving production efficiency.

Connected vehicles: 5.5G is enabling highly reliable and smart transportation to accelerate vehicle-to-everything (V2X) development. In China, which is at the forefront of smart vehicle adoption and V2X industry development, vehicle-road and vehicle-cloud synergy is becoming particularly important. In Shanghai, through vehicle-road synergy, congestion and traffic light status are detected in real time, so that vehicles can be effectively managed. This alleviates traffic congestion and reduces the accident rate by an impressive 60%.

In terms of energy saving, Huawei's system-level native green design enables "0 Bit 0 Watt" to effectively maximize network energy efficiency in all scenarios and at all times. For passive parts of devices, Huawei's unique signal direct injection feeding (SDIF) technology improves antenna efficiency by 20%. For active parts, Huawei's full series of products come with the "0 Bit 0 Watt" capability to effectively reduce energy consumption at all times.

The upgrade of services for the aforementioned five connection scenarios will unlock huge social and commercial value, and 5.5G is key to achieving this goal. Sven Zhu concluded his speech by noting that 5.5G is thriving and has been globally tested in many regions and scenarios. Huawei will work with industry partners to ramp up innovation and embrace the 5.5G era.

MWC Barcelona 2024 will be held from February 26 to February 29 in Barcelona, Spain. During the event, Huawei will showcase its latest products and solutions at stand 1H50 in Fira Gran Via Hall 1. With the 2024 commercial launch of 5.5G, Huawei is collaborating with operators and partners around the world to pursue exciting new innovation in networks, cloud, and intelligence. Together, we will drive 5G business and foster a thriving industry ecosystem, creating a new era for intelligent digital transformation. For more information, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/en/events/mwc2024.