Industry players in tech convened in Dubai, UAE on Tuesday, October 10, 2023 for this year’s Huawei Global Mobile BroadBand Forum (MBBF)
The untapped potential of 5G as a game changer, its benefits, future prospects, current challenges as well as industry solutions took centre stage at the two-day hybrid event.
Speakers drawn from a wide array of the industry took turns sharing global best practices in 5G deployment while underscoring the need for countries, organizations, industries and businesses to be at the forefront of 5G adoption.
For them, they, remain bullish about the endless opportunities and new capabilities of 5G technology driving global innovations.
“We are already on the right path towards 5G business success, and 5G-Advanced is the natural next step in 5G’s evolution. Let’s start today, build tomorrow’s networks for future services, and unleash 5G’s infinite potential for continuous success,” Li Peng, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President and President of the company’s Carrier BG emphasized.
Being the 14th of its kind, the MBBF aims to accelerate the delivery of 5G in contributing to the societal and economic transformation and elevate customer experience.
5G is the fifth generation of cellular networks – up to 100 times faster than 4G, 5G technology is providing faster connectivity speed, ultralow latency and greater bandwidth.
What do the figures look like?
5G deployment has progressed rapidly over the past four years. By June 2023, there were over 260 commercial 5G networks worldwide, more than 1.2 billion 5G users, and over 50,000 5G industry applications.
According to the statistics of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), released in March, China had more than 630 million 5G users, and had built over 2.64 million 5G base stations, accounting for more than 60% of the world’s total.
Furthermore, 110 cities across China have deployed gigabit networks, with 100% of their key venues covered by 5G.
The GSMA predicts that China, the world’s largest 5G market, will become the first market in the world with 1 billion 5G connections by 2025.
Case for Africa
Despite the numerous advantages that abound from 5G technology, the transformation of the connectivity across Africa is happening at a rather slow pace.
The penetration is low as the continent lags far behind in the evolution mainly due to investment challenges.
But Li while expressing Huawei’s support to Africa believes, the continent will leapfrog over time.
“Together with regional carriers and industry partners, we will increase investment in developing innovative solutions to connect the unconnected, help bridge the digital divide and accelerate the mobile broadband industry in Africa”, he added.
Trends to shape intelligent digital future
Glasses-Free 3D
The glasses-free 3D industry ecosystem is maturing fast. Breakthroughs in technologies including cloud rendering and real-time 3D virtual humans will take immersive experience to new heights.
Moving forward, more and more devices like mobile phones and TVs will support glasses-free 3D, which will drive data traffic up by a factor of ten relative to 2D video.
Self-Guided Vehicles
By 2025, there will be more than 500 million smart vehicles on the road. With high-bandwidth and low-latency networks, smart vehicles will be able to share information with people, vehicles, roads, and the cloud in real time.
In assisted-driving scenarios, smart vehicles will consume more than 300 gigabytes of data every month for cloud-based model training and weekly algorithm updates. In self-driving scenarios, data consumption will rise by a factor of 100.
Next-Gen Manufacturing
With breakthroughs in capabilities like network slicing and edge computing, the number of 5G private networks for enterprise use has increased a hundredfold, and the market size has grown to over US$10 billion.
However, as production lines become more flexible, increasingly reliant on wireless networks, and more core production systems are deployed on the cloud, higher requirements are posed on 5G networks.
Huawei worked with a carrier and industry partners to build the industry’s first 5G-Advanced flexible trial production line.
For this production line, 5G-Advanced supports high-concurrency and highly deterministic network connections, which helps more efficiently connect computing power between cloud and network edge.
Generalized Cellular IoT
There are more than three billion mobile IoT connections around the world, and 5G now connects more things than people. In the near future, 5G will support a broader range of IoT technologies like medium-speed RedCap and Passive IoT.
This will provide more options for different IoT scenarios, allowing for more efficient flow of data, information, and computing power.
For example, in the home appliance manufacturing sector, Passive IoT can help provide visibility along the entire distribution and production chain and has helped increase overall productivity by 30% in verification trials.
Guaranteed Intelligent Computing Everywhere
With the rise of new developments in AI, such as foundation models, demand for AI computing power will see explosive growth. By 2025, this demand is expected to be 100 times greater than current levels.
To unleash the full potential of AI computing power, more advanced network capabilities are key. Networks will need to have larger bandwidth and lower latency to power truly intelligent connectivity.
In addition, as traffic models begin to change, future networks will need to be more autonomous and intelligent to deliver a reliable experience.
About MBBF
The 14th Mobile Broadband Forum, hosted by Huawei in cooperation with GSMA, GTI, and the SAMENA Telecommunications Council, tool place on October 10 and 11, 2023, in Dubai, UAE.
From Oslo in 2010 to Dubai in 2023, the annual forum gathers ICT industry leaders across the globe to discuss the development direction of the mobile communications industry and the infinite possibilities of mobile connectivity.
This year’s forum incorporated both online and onsite activities, provided an exciting opportunity for players in the mobile and adjacent vertical ecosystems to explore 5G business success, promote ecosystem maturity, and accelerate 5.5G commercialization.
With a strong speaker lineup and innovative product launches, the mobile industry once again came together at the forum to explore how mobile broadband technology is shaping the future and continually transforming people’s lives and industries.