Huawei, ZTE forging ahead with next-level 5G

Huawei and ZTE are cranking up and rolling out 5G-Advanced network services, expanding the Chinese telecom giants’ global lead in mobile communications. The new technologies were on display at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) exhibition staged in Shanghai from June 26-28.

Compared with conventional 5G telecommunications, 5G-Advanced (abbreviated as 5G-A and also known as 5.5G), “represents a 10-fold improvement in performance across the board… as well as significant reductions in overall network power consumption,” according to Counterpoint, a technology market research organization.

In addition to much faster uplink and downlink speeds, 5G-A offers superior positioning and timing, industry analysts say.

“2024 marks the first year of commercial 5.5G and the integration of AI into a wider variety of devices. The mobile AI era is on the horizon, where intelligent services will be pervasive,” said David Wang (Wang Tao), Huawei’s executive director and chairman of the company’s ICT Infrastructure Managing Board, in an MWC address.

Wang added that the first standards release for 5G-A, known as 3GPP Release-18, was officially frozen on June 28 in Shanghai, and that… “commercial 5.5G terminals are now ready to face the world.” 3GPP stands for 3rd Generation Partner Project, a group of standards-setting organizations that develop protocols for mobile telecommunications.

Chinese mobile telecom carriers including China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Broadnet are either rolling out 5G-A or preparing to do so.

As reported from Shanghai by LightReading, China Mobile aims to deploy the technology in 300 cities across China, achieving large-scale deployment within the next two years.

China Broadnet has also launched 5G-A