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The 5.5G evolution is upon us.

The Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) launched the initiative “Embracing a prosperous 5G-Advanced era” at its 5.5G Industry Summit during the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2024. 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.

The 5.5G evolution is already an industry consensus. This echoes the thriving development of the GSMA 5G Futures Community, which has seen its membership increase 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 and accelerate this exciting 5.5G evolution.

At the summit, the GSMA also released the white paper “5G-Advanced: Shaping the future of operator services.” The white paper states that the first wave of 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 at 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.

Promoting the 5.5G Evolution to Create New Experiences and Services

5G has been developing rapidly to create new experiences, connections, and services. These include 3D connections of people, which require a single-user 500 Mbps experience with a 20-ms latency. The booming FWA services will be possible only in the networks that provide a fiber-like experience of 500 Mbps to 1 Gbps. Intelligent vehicle-to-X (V2X) services need a 20-ms latency with 99% reliability. The intelligent connections of everything and smart manufacturing require even stronger uplink performance. These new services present both opportunities and challenges for operators and network capabilities.

Operators in different regions will follow different evolutionary paths to 5.5G depending on their 5G spectrum.

One is TDD multi-band deployment. Extremely large antenna array (ELAA) is one of the key technologies that enable higher spectral efficiency and 10 times lower per-bit costs and power consumption. Using these technologies, this path maximises the potential for fulfilling immersive services, like commercial mixed reality and naked-eye 3D. Meanwhile, TDD multi-band deployment can ensure the high bandwidth needed to increase capacity and improve experience. Therefore, this path helps maximise 5.5G deterministic capabilities to ensure user experience, opening up new territories for monetisation.

The 5.5G evolution is full-speed ahead.

Another path is based on TDD addition onto FDD. Shifting all bands to 5G helps to reduce the costs of concurrently operating and maintaining four generations of mobile networks. Based on multi-band serving cell (MBSC) and flexible spectrum access (FSA), consistent service experience can be ensured for the connections of people and things.

When combined with mmWave or upper 6 GHz (U6G) bands, these paths will improve the enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), promote service package upselling, and scale up FWA provisioning.

“The first year of commercial 5.5G has come. The industry has identified the commercial use cases of 5.5G, verified its business value, and defined the evolutionary paths to 5.5G,” explained Gao. “We will continue to work with all industry partners to build a thriving 5.5G industry and unleash its potential to improve connections for consumers and businesses.”

A Showcase of Huawei’s 5.5G Advancements  

MWC Barcelona 2024 was held from the 26th to the 29th of February 26 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 and the continuing 5.5G evolution, 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.

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