Staff Reporter
Windhoek-China’s Huawei has won the award for ‘Outstanding Contribution to the Mobile Industry’ for 2018. Huawei was presented with the award by GSMA, the organisers of the Mobile World Congress, being held Barcelona, Spain.
The award recognises individuals, companies and organisations that have contributed in significant ways to the development of the mobile industry and the advancement of mobile communications.
“Over the years, we have worked with many of you to advance 3G, 4G – and now 5G and other ICT technologies. Huawei has connected over one-third of the world’s population. Since the mobile industry is evolving, it will soon become the cornerstone of a fully connected, intelligent world,” said Ken Hu, the Rotating and Acting CEO at Huawei.
Meanwhile Huawei launched its 5G customer-premises equipment (CPE), the world’s first commercial terminal device supporting the globally recognised 3GPP telecommunication standard for 5G. The product was launched at the Mobile World Congress.
To ensure peak performance from its 5G CPE, Huawei uses its self-developed Balong 5G01 chipset – the world’s first commercial chipset supporting the 3GPP standard for 5G, with theoretical downlink speeds of up to 2.3Gbps. It supports 5G across all frequency bands including sub-6GHz and millimeter wave (mmWave) to offer a complete 5G solution suitable for multiple use cases. The Balong 5G01 makes Huawei the first company offering an end-to-end 5G solution through its network, devices and chipset-level capabilities.
“[The] 5G standards and technologies are maturing. Huawei will continue to develop new technologies and work with industry partners to develop a 5G ecosystem. The ultimate goal is to build a fully connected, intelligent world,” said Ken.
Huawei has been innovating and investing in 5G for years. Since 2009, Huawei has invested US$600 million (about N$7 billion) in research and development into 5G technologies from connected vehicles and smart homes to Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality and hologram videos.
At present, Huawei has more than 2,000 5G research and development engineers and 11 5G research and development centers around the world, including three centers in Europe and six centers in China. Huawei has forged alliances with ecosystem partners from around the world. By March 2016, HUawei had more than 30 partners, including leading global carriers, industry alliances, organizations, and vertical leaders.
5G networks, now in the testing stage, will rely on denser arrays of small antennas and the cloud to offer data speeds up to 50 or 100 times faster than current 4G networks and serve as critical infrastructure for a range of industries.
Ken said this year is set to mark the first year of commercialization for 5G.
Mobile World Congress, the wireless industry’s biggest conference, begins on Monday in Barcelona, where more than 100,000 people are set to see the latest smartphones, artificial intelligence devices and autonomous drones exhibited by roughly 2,300 companies.
This year, the organizer GSMA has focused the event around eight themes including AI, innovation and Industry 4.0.