At the 2022 Global Mobile Broadband Forum, Huawei’s Chairman-in-Office Hu Houkun spoke on the theme of “5G Leads the Leap”. In the three years since 5G became commercially available, we have made good progress in network deployment, consumer services and industry applications, and have entered a period of rapid development. 5G has great potential but still faces many challenges. Let’s act together to fully exploit and enhance the network capabilities of 5G, develop diverse services such as cloud and system integration, and jointly promote the leapfrog development of 5G networks, applications and industries,” he urged.”
By October 2022, more than 230 operators have launched 5G commercial services worldwide, with more than 3 million 5G sites deployed and 700 million 5G users. Based on the rapid advancement of network deployment, 5G is moving from a period of commercial scale to a period of rapid development.
5G consumer-facing services remain the ballast for operators’ revenues. Compared to 4G, the 5G user experience has been significantly improved and new consumer behaviour, represented by video, has taken shape. This has led to a two-fold increase in Internet traffic (DOU) and a 20-40% increase in ARPU, driving steady growth in operators’ connectivity revenues.
Meanwhile, 5G industry-oriented applications are becoming a new engine of revenue growth for operators. New 5G-driven applications are already emerging in several markets around the world in areas such as oil and gas, manufacturing and transportation. These applications are not only bringing business innovation, but are also starting to deliver real business value to operators. For example, in 2021, Chinese operators will have more than 3,000 5GtoB commercial projects with revenues of more than RMB 3.4 billion, leveraging 10 times DICT revenues, making it the fastest growing business area for operators.
5G has created many new scenarios, applications and models, which present unprecedented opportunities for the development of the entire industry. To seize these opportunities, Hu believes that there are three ways to prepare.
Firstly, continued technological innovation, improved network construction and enhanced user experience. 5G should not only be built to meet coverage requirements, but should also be built around service and experience. A quality user experience is the key to attracting consumers to choose 5G services more often. For example, Chinese operators have optimised their networks around the Jitterbug business experience, reducing first-screen latency by 50%, reducing lag rates to one-tenth of the original, and doubling traffic.
Secondly, we are working together to define and promote the orderly development of the 5.5G industry. The four key features of 5.5G, namely 10Gbps downlink, 1Gbps uplink, 100 billion connections and endogenous intelligence, will be realised by 2025. Hu called on “the industry to work together to drive 5.5G standards definition, spectrum acquisition and industry chain construction.”
Finally, business and commercial innovation should be developed to unlock the full 5G dividend. Based on the advantages of 5G’s large bandwidth and low latency network capabilities, operators can fully synergise and integrate 5G, cloud and AI to provide new business experiences for consumer users, such as XR, cloud gaming and new calls, while providing convenient, reliable and secure digital services for enterprise users. In the process, operators can expand from connectivity providers to cloud service providers and system integrators, thus opening up new revenue streams.
