MWC 2023 was held in Barcelona, Spain, from February 27 to March 2. At the summit “Moving into the 5.5G Era”, Yang Chaobin, senior vice president and president of ICT products and solutions at Huawei, said that 6G is still in the early research stage, so 5.5G is the next step in the evolution of 5G networks, and the industry is accelerating to form a consensus on this.
According to the introduction, 5.5G has already started the standardization process, and will define 5.5G technical specifications through 3GPP Release18, Release19, and Release20, and continue to enrich the technical content of 5.5G, Release18 version will be frozen in 2024 H1; F5.5G has already landed the standard design from the industry initiative, ETSI The IETF and IEEE are also working on the first phase of Net5.5G standards such as SRv6, Wi-Fi 7 and 800GE, which will be fully released in 2024.
Yang Chaobin pointed out that spectrum resources are the cornerstone of wireless networks, and the 5.5G industry is working together to promote the Sub 100GHz spectrum towards NR: on the one hand, the current stock of spectrum will be integrated on demand through spectrum replanting and gradually move towards 5.5G; on the other hand, we will work together to promote the commercialization of millimeter wave and U6GHz ultra-large bandwidth spectrum to provide resource guarantee for 5.5G.
During this conference, GSMA led industry partners to form the 5.5G Community, WBBA (World Broadband Association) has been formally established in 2022 and released the Next Generation Broadband Roadmap white paper for F5.5G, OMDIA released the Net5.5G white paper in September last year, from The OMDIA released the Net5.5G white paper in September last year, aligning industry goals in terms of technology evolution, application scenarios, and industrial ecology to align industry rhythms and accelerate the commercialization process. In addition, 5.5G will achieve on-demand integration of existing resources in 5G networks through key technologies such as stock spectrum replowing and equipment multimode reuse, gradually evolving to 5.5G smoothly and fully protecting operators’ existing investments.
Huawei that Yang Chaobin said that with the joint efforts of the industry, 5.5G has made breakthroughs in many key technologies. Innovative technologies such as ultra-large-scale antenna array (ELAA) and virtual large carrier reconfiguration non-contiguous spectrum (MBSC) for wireless networks have been validated by multiple operators around the world, bringing 5.5G 10 Gigabit capability to reality. In the F5.5G fixed network, 50G PON has been standardized by ITU-T as the next generation PON, and key technologies such as symmetric uplink and downlink and multi-mode unification have been developed and matured, laying the foundation for smooth upgrade evolution from F5G to F5.5G. 5.5G / F5.5G development drives IP network upgrade and opens up Net5.5G. Net5.5G provides 800GE ultra-wide, end-to-end, IPv6+, intelligent, secure, time-sensitive, and time-sensitive IP networks. Net5.5G continues to enhance in 800GE ultra-wide, end-to-end IPv6+, intelligence, security, latency, etc., bringing new capabilities, products and opportunities for operators and stimulating their continued growth. Data shows that by the end of 2022, the number of global 5G subscribers will exceed 1 billion, the number of gigabit broadband subscribers will reach 100 million, and there will be more than 20,000 5G industry applications.
