Huawei predicts 10-fold data traffic growth as world moves towards 5.5G

Li Peng, Huawei's senior vice president and president of the carrier BG, called for further innovation in 5G to create new value and unleash digital dividends. He said the industry needs to innovate together to meet increasing digital requirements in both the consumer and industrial markets.

Speaking at this year's Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Shanghai, he discussed how 5G is spearheading the development of the digital industry and enabling the digitalisation of all industries.

Peng said, "The future is now. New business scenarios for people, homes, businesses, and vehicles are delivering new experiences. This is raising higher requirements for network capabilities. Enhanced network capabilities, like ten billion of bits per second (Gbps) downlink, one Gbps uplink, and 100 billion Internet of Things (IoT) connections, are creating a vast market space in 5.5G for carriers."

Currently, the world has over 1.2 billion 5G users and a release from Huawei said Huawei predicts that these applications and content will also spur a ten-fold surge in traffic.

Peng said that the industry needs access to new frequency bands, including the six gigahertz (GHz) and Millimeter wave bands, as well as sub-100 GHz spectrum for 5G new radio. Huawei has already worked with multiple carriers to perform technical verification for the six GHz band.

It added that in the consumer market, skyrocketing demand for new experiences has led to a boom in innovative forms of content and applications. This has prompted carriers to upgrade home networks that will deliver a bandwidth of ten Gbps like private lines.

The release said Huawei also launched the 5G fixed wireless access (FWA) square solutions, including FWA Pro for ultrafast connectivity, FWA Lite for cost-effective connectivity and FWA Biz for highly reliable connectivity. It said since 5G commercialisation began four years ago, more than 17,000 private 5G networks have been built globally.

Peng also touched on the popular topic of autonomous vehicles during his speech and said 5.5G will help cars sense their surroundings much more clearly as it will have advanced sensing is a core component of intelligent traffic light systems, navigation on rainy and foggy days, beyond-line-of-sight sensing and more.

Peng said that Huawei will deepen its partnership with the industry to support these huge demands for computing power on clouds and intelligent real-time computing. The connectivity and computing markets are expected to become promising areas of growth for carriers.