Huawei: 5.5G is the only way for 5G network to upgrade and evolve

On March 2, MWC 2023 was held in Barcelona, ​​Spain from February 27 to March 2. At the "Join Hands to Enter the 5.5G Era" summit held during the event, Yang Chaobin, senior vice president of Huawei and president of ICT products and solutions, said that 6G is still in the early research stage, so 5.5G is the only way for the next upgrade and evolution of 5G networks , and the industry is accelerating the formation of a consensus on this.

According to reports, 5.5G has 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 will be frozen in H1 2024. F5.5G has been implemented from industry initiatives to standard design. ETSI released the white paper of F5G Advanced in September last year, and the first standard version of F5.5G, Release3, which it took the lead in defining, will be frozen in H1 2024. IETF and IEEE have also fully carried out the first phase of standard work related to Net5.5G, such as SRv6, Wi-Fi 7, and 800GE, and the relevant standards 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 jointly promoting the Sub 100GHz spectrum to NR : on the one hand, the current existing spectrum is integrated on demand through spectrum re-farming and gradually moves towards 5.5G; on the other hand, it jointly promotes the commercial use 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) was also officially 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, aligning industry goals from the perspectives of technology evolution, application scenarios, and industry ecology, aligning industry rhythms, and accelerating the commercialization process. In addition, 5.5G will realize on-demand integration of existing resources in 5G networks through key technologies such as re-farming of existing spectrum and multi-mode multiplexing of equipment, gradually evolving smoothly to 5.5G, and fully protecting operators' existing investments.

IT Home learned from Huawei officials that Yang Chaobin said that with the joint efforts of the industry, breakthroughs have been made in many key technologies of 5.5G . Innovative technologies such as ultra-large-scale antenna arrays (ELAA) and virtual large carrier reconstruction of non-continuous spectrum (MBSC) in wireless networks have been verified by multiple operators around the world, bringing 5.5G 10G capabilities into reality. In F5.5G fixed networks, 50G PON has been standardized by ITU-T as the next-generation PON. Key technologies such as upstream and downstream symmetry and multi-mode integration continue to develop and mature, laying the foundation for the smooth upgrade evolution of F5G to F5.5G. The development of 5.5G / F5.5G drives the upgrade of IP networks and opens Net5.5G. Net5.5G continues to enhance in terms of 800GE ultra-wide, end-to-end IPv6+, intelligence, security, latency, etc., bringing new capabilities, new products and new opportunities to operators, stimulating their continued growth. Data shows that by the end of 2022, the number of global 5G users will exceed 1 billion, the number of gigabit broadband users will reach 100 million , and there will be more than 20,000 5G industry applications.