Mr. Yang Lifan, Deputy General Manager of China Unicom Beijing and Cao Ming, President of Wireless Solution, Huawei share the achievements of their award-winning 5G Capital programme.

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Sun Shiwei, Deputy General Manager, China Mobile Department of Market Operation and Chen Haiyong, President of CS&IMS Domain, Huawei Cloud Core Network Product Line talk about the success of the 5G New Calling services that are being used by over four million people across China.

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In an interview with Mobile World Live at Huawei’s Win Win Live extended reality studio at MWC Barcelona 2024, Sun Shiwei, Deputy General Manager, China Mobile Department of Market Operation, explained 5GNC is a strategic product for the operator. By adding AI and computing capabilities to calls, it upgrades traditional voice and video calling and brings users ultra-high-definition, interaction, intelligent and efficient New Calling experiences.

Indeed, 5GNC is backed by the GSMA. A recent whitepaper from the organisation argues the service offers the following new features: a new experience (the call is enhanced from a pure voice and video communication to a ultra-high-definition, intelligent, and interactive experience); new capabilities (media and data interaction capabilities can be seamlessly integrated into voice and video calls to create rich applications that transform a regular call into a more rewarding or more efficient communication medium); and a new ecosystem (5GNC will create a new ecosystem where many different types of industries will be able to reach their customers through mobile connections by leveraging well known web technology that works out-of-the-box, ‘New Calling Mini-Apps’.)

It’s early days for China Mobile’s 5GNC rollout; Huawei’s flagship mobile phone Mate60 Pro made the first call on its commercial network in October 2023. China Mobile’s provincial subsidiaries then started to gradually open subscriptions to 5GNC services to its user base and by the end of 2023 more than 4 million users had subscribed to 5GNC services.

Although 5GNC is only a few months old, Sun Shiwei outlined clear progress so far, with the launch of multiple services. These include fun calling, calling subtitles, real-time translation, visualized voice calling, and auto transcription. China Mobile and Huawei have also set up a joint service innovation center to create and incubate new services. The visualized voice calling has attracted more than one million users within two months. And in the past Chinese New Year of the Dragon, more than 17 million consumers used its 5G New Calling application for New Year’s greetings.

Network support
Of course this has only been possible due to Huawei’s work with China Mobile. Huawei this year upgraded its technology offering and released a New Calling-Advanced solution. Chen Haiyong, President of CS & IMS Domain, Huawei Cloud Core Network Product Line, explained that a multi-modal communication function is introduced in the system architecture, starting a new era of “multi-modal communication”.

Huawei’s new solution provides real-time voice-driven avatar services. “Users can customise their own avatar and drive this avatar in real time through voice during the call,” explained Chen Haiyong. “The avatar’s lip movements will match exactly the caller’s voice perfectly. Various stylised content can be introduced, enabling carriers to build personalised calling experiences.”

Chen added “the New Calling-Advanced solution continuously upgrades the calling experience of individual and industry users, and supports operators to transform to content operation, and future evolve to multi-modal communication with intelligence added on. It greatly increases the value of operators’ call entry and brings huge business opportunities to the voice industry.”

China Mobile’s Sun Shiwei is particularly excited by the potential of the avatar technology. Looking ahead to service evolution in 2024, he said the operator will focus on real-time voice-driven avatars. “Besides showing avatars to each other, users can play with the avatar in real time through voice, making the calling more fun.”

Beyond consumer services
5GNC offers opportunities beyond just the consumer segment. China Mobile plans to launch intelligent interactive customer service applications, which could be widely used in government public services, finance, and other industries, significantly improving communication efficiency.

“In terms of service operation, we will carry out refined operations for vertical users and differentiate user groups, such as young people and elderly people, as well as user development and service operation in various industries,” commented Sun Shiwei. “For example, finance, e-commerce, and government services.”

“Our goal for 2024 is to bring in another 30 million New Calling users compared to 2023. At the same time, we will continue to expand the scale of video call users, with a target of more than 150 million. In this way, tens of millions of users can enjoy the brand-new call experience brought by 5G New Calling.”

Industry co-operation
Both China Mobile and Huawei agree that the success of 5GNC will be maximised by a global unified ecosystem.

China Mobile’s Sun Shiwei noted the operator will continue to develop more high-quality terminals, and promote the large-scale commercial development of native DC terminals. Secondly, the operator will focus on enhancing the quality of its services, and thirdly, ensure application innovation, with an objective to transform call services from communication tools to information services.

“In the future, China Mobile will continue to strengthen cooperation with standards organisations and partners in various fields, such as networks, chips, and terminals, continue to promote and expand the 5G New Calling ecosystem, improve the ecological value, and enable more users to enjoy the services, and share the industry value brought by 5G New Calling within all partners,” concluded Sun Shiwei.

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Yang Lifan, Deputy General Manager of China Unicom Beijing, suggested advanced technologies need to be used in large scale by industries, and 5G-A will be no exception. “Just as the prediction four years ago that 5G would be used primarily in B2B scenarios proved false. So too is the misconception 5G-A will be applied only in targeted scenarios.”

He insisted deployment scale and adaptability to common use cases will determine 5G-A’s vitality, adding the value of its 5G-A network project does not lie in specialised experiences nor the networking scale. “Instead, its value lies in facilitating a 5G-A experience with the minimum cost before deploying at scale.”

The 5G Capital innovation project, forged between the operator and Huawei to boost the reach, coverage and experience of 5G networks, aims to solve the most important problem encountered in large-scale 5G-A deployments: high-frequency discontinuous networking.

The network needs to integrate the advanced technologies of equipment vendors and the operational capabilities of operator networks, he stated, noting the advancement of social technologies, the level of network intelligence and the ability to optimise the network are vital.

The two companies initiated the 5G Capital project in 2020, with the pair working together to explore the 5G-A ecosystem. The 5G-A demonstration zone in Beijing Financial Street set a good example for the technology to go global and applications to be curated, said Cao Ming, President of Wireless Solution at Huawei.

Cao highlighted three significant factors of the demo: the delivery of 5G-A network capabilities such as a 10GB/s downlink peak rate; verification of key 5G technologies, including extremely large antenna arrays (ELAAs technology; and verification of the end-to-end capabilities of planning, construction, maintenance and optimisation of 5G-A networking.

With the 3GPP Release 18 standard about to be frozen and key factors of 5G such as technology and ecosystems increasingly mature, this year will mark the commercial launch of 5G-A. Many operators around the world are planning deployments. According to a GSMA Intelligence survey, half of all global operators are expected to roll out commercial 5G-A networks within two years of relevant standards being released.

What’s next?

Looking ahead to the likely opportunities and challenges 5G-A will present, Yang noted a successful mobile communication network must be available and accessible to customers; evolve with other industries, especially the IT sector; and must be economically feasible.

By these standards, he said 5G-A may still have many obstacles. For example, if single-point deployment is possible, will large-scale deployment be possible? How do we address deployment in outdoor scenarios? What about permanent and temporary indoor scenarios? Even if indicators are satisfactory in one specific area, what about the end-to-end process as a whole?”

“Even if the average latency continues to drop, what about the worst indicators? The higher the bandwidth, the more possibilities AI seems to have. These are questions 5G Capital aims to address.”

Rapid technological innovation across various industries is creating new requirements for 5G networks, forcing Huawei to develop and deliver new capabilities for operators, Cao stated.

Huawei is pursuing five innovation directions to meet the increasing network requirements: multi-band, multi-antenna, broadband, green and intelligence by providing ten-times network and multi-dimensional connectivity capabilities to accelerate the upgrade of connections among people, homes, things, industries and vehicles.

He said it collaborated with China Unicom Beijing to install MetaAAUs at numerous rural sites, achieving green gigabit networks. “In the next stage of 5G advancement, Huawei is committed to crafting innovative solutions that will help carriers improve efficiency by tenfold and achieve high profitability.”

New use cases

In the 5G era, Yang pointed out new applications revolve around AI and industrial control, which are creating new challenges for operators and vendors. “These areas hold the key for breakthroughs in 5G-A. We should never underestimate people’s dreams for a better life. Our business should align with the needs of social progress, and we must play our role in advancing it.”

In the 5G era, he noted China Unicom Beijing has taken the lead in providing cloud gaming services for customers, introducing innovative 3D and XR applications.

Meanwhile, the internet of vehicles (IoV) will connect hundreds of millions of vehicles to intelligent traffic cameras on roads, improving efficiency, control and reducing accidents. He cited data estimating IoV technology can prevent more than 95 per cent of accidents. “We have verified that IoV can reduce both traffic accidents and congestion by more than 20 per cent. This will promote the development of highly-reliable intelligent transportation.”

The cost of reduced capability (RedCap) modules fell in 2023. Some 10,000 factories are fully connected, with hundreds of applications in commercial use, covering 80 per cent of industry scenarios and reducing costs for local governments.

The use of 5G for commercial purposes advanced quickly worldwide in 2023, Cao said, noting 5G-A is now in the pilot phase for various industries and has set some standards for global commercial use. Examples of verticals using the technology include manufacturing and ports in Europe, mines in southern Africa, oil and gas in the Middle East and healthcare in Thailand.

He added the integration of 5G-A with industries has become seamless. “The technology significantly boosted economic development and the smart manufacturing industry in certain regions through infrastructure upgrades and industry innovation. In 2024, we believe the widespread commercial use and large-scale deployment of 5G-A will provide stronger support for governance, the economy and industry intelligence.”

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Speaking at Huawei Product & Solution Launch 2024 entitled “5.5G is Now, Time to Act”, Cao Ming, President of Huawei Wireless Solution, said the company has been working with industry partners since 2020 to define the vision for 5.5G, and after years of development, the technology has “gone from vision to reality”.

With 5.5G industry elements fully ready, 5.5G commercialisation is accelerating globally, he said.

The Middle East was the first to see commercial 5.5G deployments at scale. In Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America, many operators have successfully achieved 10Gb/s through technical verifications on live networks. In China, 5Gb/s capability verification was completed in more than 20 provinces, preparing for commercial rollouts this year.

Cao identifies three main spectrum paths to 5.5G. Operators can either make use of TDD large-bandwidth multi-carrier resources, maximise the spectral efficiency of existing FDD spectrum through multi-band convergence or deploy mmWave, upper-6GHz spectrum in hotspot areas on demand to achieve capability of 10Gb/s.

Huawei’s full series of 5.5G GigaGreen products and solutions, with Native Giga and Native Green capabilities, enable operators to take a multi-band path to 5.5G across all bands, delivering gigabit speeds performance and high energy savings, he said.

With joint development across the industry, its GigaGreen series, launched in October 2023, helps global operators open the door to 5.5G. The series delivers “the best performance with the least resources”, Cao said. With the simplified, green and efficient O&M solution, operators “can move seamlessly towards in the 5.5G era”.

GigaGreen innovations
Huawei uses multi-band extremely large antenna arrays (ELAAs) to build high-speed networks. Its MetaAAU with ELAA technology improves coverage and experience for TDD bands.

This year, the 64T MetaAAU was upgraded from single- to multi-band. As the industry’s only dual-band MetaAAU, with a unique design of antenna elements, it can integrate two bands in one box to help reuse antenna space, Cao stated. MetaAAU with ELAA enables continuous coverage and multi-band, simplified networks. In China, the Middle East, and many other places, MetaAAU has been implemented for multi-carrier TDD capability verification, demonstrating its ability to simplify site construction while providing continuous 5Gb/s.

For FDD bands, Huawei ultra-wideband platform was upgraded to support all bands and all scenarios. Huawei provides FDD 8T8R and Massive MIMO products that support native GHz ultra-high bandwidth, allowing for maximum FDD spectral and energy efficiencies. In Cambodia, the triple-band 8T8R solution improves coverage by 6dB and reduces power consumption by 30 per cent compared with 4T6S. In Malaysia, triple-band Massive MIMO increases capacity by four-times and traffic by 1.5-times for 4G, while allowing for a seven-times capacity boost with 5G.

Since mmWave offers ultra-large bandwidth, the spectrum is a key band for a 5.5G 10Gb/s experience, Cao stated. Huawei integrated its mmWave active antenna unit (AAU) with more than 2,000 elements, the largest in the industry. The company also upgraded the beamforming algorithm to support a four-times beam density. With the collaboration of software and hardware, the mmWave AAU can realise continuous coverage with 10Gb/s. In many countries including Finland and China, mmWave has shown a smooth, stable 10Gb/s performance in mobility scenarios, he said.

With the move to 5.5G, the indoor experience has become more important. In high-density indoor scenarios, such as airports, stadiums and shopping malls, the traffic density can be more than 100-times compared with outdoor conditions. Huawei’s LampSite X covering all bands, including sub-6GHz and mmWave, supports bandwidth up to 1.6GHz, delivering 10Gb/s and diverse capabilities.

Cao stated Huawei’s 5.5G full-series equipment is Native Green that supports “0 Bit 0 Watt”, setting a new network benchmark in the 5.5G era. In idle mode, the equipment can wake-up within seconds, and the power consumption is less than 10 watts. In active state, energy consumption can be reduced by 30 per cent without experience loss. In Zhejiang, China, “0 Bit 0 Watt” was successfully verified on live networks and achieved optimal energy savings.

Huawei recently launched the Eco series antennas, which improves all-band energy efficiency by 20 per cent under various configurations across different areas. It also introduced the Marconi antenna, the industry’s first low-wind-load and digital version. It supports two-dimensional beam adjustment and remote acquisition of site engineering parameters, which can eliminate site visits, helping operators reduce OPEX. In Saudi Arabia, the Marconi antenna has enabled customers to reduce rents by 50 per cent.

The development of 5.5G networks also requires the upgrade of transmission networks. Huawei’s next-generation MAGICSwave supports such a move. For urban, suburban and backbone networks, all-scenario microwave backhaul is now based on the 2T architecture, meeting the requirements for on-demand capacity expansion towards 5.5G.

The E-band is crucial for urban areas. Huawei’s new 2T E-band kit brings the performance to a new level. Cao said “it provides a maximum of 50Gb/s backhaul capacity without additional spectrum.”

In addition, in backbone scenarios, algorithm and material innovation greatly simplify complex hardware configuration to make full use of low-band fragmented spectrum, he said.

Lastly, in the 5.5G era, intelligence is an important feature of the network. Huawei’s IntelligentRAN incorporates large communication models and RAN digital twin systems to support layer 4 network intelligence. It has been verified in multiple provinces in China, helping operators reduce network costs and increase efficiencies.

“Huawei’s GigaGreen full-series solutions provide the most powerful performance with minimal resource consumption, helping operators sustain success in the 5.5G era with networks that offer the highest performance and energy efficiency,” concluded Cao.

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Li said 5G is the fastest growing mobile technology ever, with some 300 operators in more than 100 countries deploying commercial networks in less than five years. Global 5G connections totalled 1.5 billion at end-2023; 4G reached that figure in seven years.

While about 20 per cent of global mobile subscribers use 5G service, the technology generates nearly 30 per cent of all mobile traffic and accounts for more than 40 per cent of service revenue.

“These data points show 5G is certainly on the right path to business success,” Li stated.

With mobile operators across the world eager to find new ways to monetise their 5G investments and boost revenue, he suggested high-quality networks are still the foundation of business success. It is no surprise more operators are proposing ambitious plans to deploy 5G networks to improve the user experience and monetise data traffic.

Many operators in the Middle East, for example, have built nationwide 5G Massive MIMO networks, driving the success of 5G FWA in the region, with nearly 3 million households connections, he noted. Compared with 4G home broadband, 5G FWA increased DOU three-fold and ARPU by 30 per cent.

He argued 5G is about more than just monetising data traffic.

Compared with LTE, 5G delivers ten-times faster speeds at a much lower cost-per-bit, which has helped increase return on investment in both the consumer and home broadband markets.

“Multi-dimensional monetisation is opening up new opportunities,” he stated, giving the example of the shift to speed-based pricing, charging different rates for different speed tiers, which has boosted ARPU and led to increases in post-paid subscribers. Operators in Switzerland, Austria, UAE and Thailand are taking this path.

Another new source of revenue is offering users higher speeds in hotspots for a set amount of time and targeting live streamers with plans that guaranteed uplink rates, leading to a 70 per cent jump in ARPU in one market.

B2B success
Operators in China also are pushing uptake of 5G services in the enterprise space, generating $3 billion from private 5G networks.

Autonomous vehicles are seeing widespread adoption supported by gigabit uplink rates and stable latency which 5.5G networks can deliver.

“Very soon 5.5G’s new capabilities, such as deterministic latency, precise positioning and passive IoT, will create more opportunities for operators in the B2B market.”

Generative AI technology will drive the mobile industry into “the era of all intelligence”, he noted.

IDC forecasts shipments of AI smartphones to reach 170 million at end-2024, accounting for 15 per cent of global shipments.

“Next-generation AI phones will have more powerful storage, displays and imaging functions. Together with AI-generated content applications, AI-powered handsets will help generate 100 billion gigabytes of content, bringing trillions of gigabytes of traffic to mobile networks.”

Li believes 5G’s greatest strength is its ability to deliver multi-dimensional experiences, which gives operators an opportunity to maximise the value of every bit.

He noted these are just a few examples showing how migrating more users and traffic to 5G is driving solid revenue gains. “With 5G-Advanced around the corner, the possibilities are endless. To make the most of them, we need to build today’s networks for tomorrow’s applications.”

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