PRESS RELEASE: Since its commercial launch in 2019, 5G has grown much faster than its predecessors 3G and 4G, becoming the fastest growing generation of mobile technologies. After the unveiling of 5G-Advanced last April, the 3GPP determined the first 28 research items for release 18 in December, taking the technology research and standardization of 5G-Advanced to a new practical stage. What changes and improvements will 5G-Advanced bring and what new value can it promise to operators worldwide?
5G is moving towards 5G-Advanced to continue to bring benefits to various industries
5G is quickly becoming an important factor for the Internet of Things (IoT), manufacturing, positioning and many other applications, increasing production efficiency. Joe Barrett, president of the GSA, believes that “many fields will benefit from the improved positioning accuracy of 5G-Advanced, particularly in terms of reducing the cost of deploying Mobile IoT.” He noted that both the members of GSA and all major suppliers will continue to promote the standardization of 5G-Advanced and support its development.
The GSMA shares a very positive view on the new use cases of 5G-Advanced. Henry Calvert, GSMA’s Senior Director of Group Technology, said the world will soon see 5G-Advanced unveil new use cases for both consumer and industrial markets. He sees XR becoming one of the most exciting new experiences 5G-Advanced will bring to consumers. From virtual reality (VR) to augmented reality (AR), this new technology allows interactive digital worlds to be built on top of the physical world. The potential of XR goes well beyond consumer entertainment. Various industries are exploring XR to discover new ways of working.
The GSMA is currently working to establish a 5G Advanced community, with the aim of bringing together stakeholders from all parts of the industry to work together in defining the new technology and the use cases it will enable in the future. to make. “We are talking about scalable adoption. We want to commercially unleash the connectivity of the new standards. And that’s really about understanding the use cases and the business case for the new technology.”
Global Operator Efforts Drive 5G Evolution
Undoubtedly, telecom operators are the main force on the road to 5G-Advanced. Etisalat UAE, a leading 5G operator in the Middle East, is committed to the evolution of 5G. According to its CTIO, Khalid Murshed, it sees exploring the evolution of 5G as an important part of dealing with the growing scale, complexity and technical challenges associated with the increasing importance of 5G. As 5G evolves rapidly to bring innovative applications to different sectors, the continuous evolution of its technologies is essential for the industry to meet the demands of the industry.
“The research and standardization of the 5G evolution is now at a substantial stage. 5G-Advanced research items include 5G use cases: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), ultra-reliable, low-latency communications (URLLC), Internet of Things (IoT), and vehicle to everything (V2X). 5G-Advanced will also include many new use cases such as high-capacity uplink, AR/VR, high-precision positioning, and energy savings on the network and device,” said Khalid Murshed.
China is one of the world’s biggest drivers of 5G development. The three Tier 1 operators are very active in the evolution of 5G. Last year, China Mobile, together with Huawei and other industry partners, launched the “5G-Advanced Innovation-Industry Chain Convergence” program. Not long ago, it shared the achievements of the program at a conference and announced new plans to implement the next phase of the 5G evolution based on high-performance networks, intelligent and simplified networks and low-carbon targets. China Unicom has proposed three technical solutions for 5G-Advanced: smart new vision, smart high uplink and smart super sensing. China Telecom has launched the Super TimeFreq Folding solution for 5G-Advanced. This new solution integrates large uplink bandwidth, low latency, high reliability and ultra-large capacity into a single network, enabling operators to better support core industrial production with high-performance 5G networks.
Zain Group selected Huawei to accelerate the migration from 4G to 5G, including 5.5G, to enrich the user experience in multiple markets. A Memorandum of Understanding was signed at the recent Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, setting out the partnership. Based on the MoU, Huawei will support Zain in optimizing its network architecture with the aim of upgrading its 5G capabilities to implement uplink-centric broadband communications (UCBC), real-time broadband communications (RTBC), and harmonized communications and discovery (HCS).
The industry has already reached a consensus on the evolution towards 5G-Advanced and is now working with industry partners to define the key features, implementation strategies and product guidelines of 5G-Advanced. By continuously exploring ultra-high bandwidth, uplink spectrum reconstruction, extremely large antenna array Massive MIMO (ELAA-MM), green air interfaces and native intelligence, the mobile industry will be fully prepared to build “1+1+N”- large-scale 5.5G networks to deliver a ubiquitous 10Gbps experience and 100 billion-level connectivity.
The development of 5G has entered a new chapter worldwide. With its continued evolution, we believe the next stop of 5G will be even more exciting.