The 14th edition of the Global Mobile Broadband Forum – MBBF 2023 kicked off in Dubai, UAE on October 10, 2023 with a strong lineup of speakers and innovative product launches. The event, with a host Huawei in collaboration with GSMA, GTI and the Telecommunications Council SAMENA, brings together key stakeholders and ICT industry leaders around the world to discuss the direction of the mobile communications industry and the infinite possibilities of mobile connectivity.
This year’s forum named MBBF 2023 – incorporated both online and on-site activities, which provided an exciting opportunity for industry players to explore 5G business successes, promote ecosystem maturity and accelerate 5.5G commercialization. Delivering the keynote address at MBBF 2023, Huawei’s Corporate Senior Vice President and President of the company’s Carrier BG, Li Pengoutlined the five trends that will shape the smart and intelligent 5G digital future and the next evolutions 5.5G promises.
According to Li Peng, “5G is a critical part of the new economic transformation and enables new innovations in general-purpose technologies. For digital industries, 5G is developing rapidly, opening up new markets and opportunities.”
What is 5G?
5G, or fifth generation mobile networks, is a breakthrough in wireless technology that aims to make our digital lives faster, smarter and more connected. Take your current 4G internet speed and multiply it by ten. It has lightning fast data download and upload speeds. 5G is, however, about more than just speed. It has ultra-low latency, meaning there is negligible delay between sending and receiving data, which is critical for real-time applications such as online gaming and autonomous vehicles, as it ensures instant responses. 5G networks can handle multiple devices simultaneously, paving the way for the Internet of Things (IoT), which is primarily the interconnection between devices that make our homes and offices smarter.
Speaking at 5G-Advanced, the next evolutionary step in 5G technology, Mr. Li Peng also noted that the industry needs to work together to promote the development of devices and application ecosystems, verify usage scenarios, and accelerate the large-scale commercialization of FWA Square, Passive IoT and RedCap. These efforts, he said, are critical to making the most of the five new trends that will shape a smart digital future that he outlined.
3D without glasses
The glasses-free 3D industry ecosystem is rapidly maturing. Innovations in technologies, including cloud rendering and real-time 3D virtual people, will take the immersive experience to new heights. Moving forward, more and more devices such as mobile phones and televisions will support glasses-free 3D, which will increase data traffic tenfold over 2D video.
Self-driving 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 each month for cloud-based model training and weekly algorithm updates. In self-driving scenarios, data consumption will increase by 100 times.
Next Generation Manufacturing
With innovations in capabilities such as network sharding and edge computing, the number of private 5G networks for enterprise use has grown a hundredfold and the market size has grown to over US$10 billion. However, as production lines become more flexible, rely more on wireless networks, and more key manufacturing systems are deployed in the cloud, higher demands are placed on 5G networks.
Huawei collaborated with a carrier and industry partners to build the industry’s first flexible 5G-Advanced test production line. For this product line, 5G-Advanced supports highly concurrency and highly deterministic network connections, which help connect computing power more efficiently between the cloud and the network edge.
Generalized Cellular IoT
There are more than three billion mobile IoT connections worldwide, and 5G is now connecting more things than people. Soon, 5G will support a wider range of IoT technologies such as medium-speed RedCap and passive IoT. This will provide more options for different IoT scenarios, allowing more efficient flow of data, information and computing power. For example, in the home appliance manufacturing sector, passive IoT can help provide visibility across the entire distribution and production chain and has already helped increase overall productivity by 30% in verification tests.
Guaranteed Intelligent Computing Everywhere
With the rise of new developments in artificial intelligence, such as fundamental models, the demand for artificial intelligence computing power will experience explosive growth. By 2025, this demand is expected to be 100 times higher than today’s levels. To unleash the full potential of AI computing power, more advanced network capabilities are essential. Networks will need to have higher bandwidth and lower latency to power truly intelligent connectivity. Additionally, as traffic models begin to change, future networks will need to be more autonomous and intelligent to deliver a reliable experience.
conclusion
Li Peng’s talk was a glimpse into a future where technology pushes past existing boundaries and facilitates new possibilities that will reshape societies and economies. As the industry absorbs these insights, the path to 5.5G-Advanced becomes clearer, promising a future where connectivity is not just ubiquitous, but intelligent to ensure a digital society that is truly inclusive, immersive and transformative.