The Labour MP for Hull North, Dame Diana Johnson, has presented a petition to parliament – signed by residents of Hull North – that urges the government to make it a requirement for new telecoms poles to apply for local planning permission and consult residents before being built – risking delays to the gigabit broadband […]

As the 5G ecosystem continues to expand, there is an urgent need to start preparing the networks for the upcoming network evolution of 5.5G so the telcos continue to provide exceptional customer experience and are able to introduce pathbreaking use cases. There is a growing consensus in the industry that 5.5G is a crucial step to improving network capabilities to provide different kinds of digital services.

More than 230 5G networks have already been deployed and now serve more than one billion users and devices. However, the growing number of users coupled with the popularity of immersive experiences and the emergence of new use cases, like Metaverse, mean that the 5G networks will soon be insufficient to cater to the exponential growth. Therefore, the adoption of 5.5G is critical for the industry to prepare for the upcoming tsunami.

“The year 2023 will be crucial to the development of 5.5G. This year will see the introduction of the 3GPP Release 18 standards. Further, the device ecosystem is also fast maturing and the spectrum is also prepared for ultra-large bandwidth. With such developments, the commercial deployment of 5.5G is likely to start from 2024,” says Gan Bin, Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of Wireless Solutions at Huawei. He was speaking at the recently concluded Mobile World Congress 2023, the largest telecom event on the planet.

The 5.5G technology is emerging as the technology of choice to help telcos cater to the growing demands of the network. The industry’s vision is that 5.5G will be able to provide a downlink speed of 10Gbps and will be able to connect 100 billion connections. Further, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) devices is likely to grow exponentially. 5.5G is a crucial milestone for the telcos to improve network capacity before 6G becomes a reality in 2030.

5.5G enables telcos to deliver ubiquitous gigabit-per-second performance. It utilizes Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to improve customer experience and autonomously optimize resources, thus helping telcos bring down expenses and energy consumption.

Moving confidently towards the 5.5G era

“Ubiquitous 10Gbps experience is now closer to becoming a reality. Large bandwidth spectrum mmWave and the 6GHz spectrum can be used by the service providers for 5.5G,” elaborated Gan Bin. A significant development is the release of mmWave Chipset. MediaTek chipset offers a downlink of 7.67 Gbps and an uplink speed of 3.76 Gbps. On the other hand, Qualcomm Snapdragon’s chip for 5.5G offers 10 Gbps speed with 10CC carrier aggregation on mmWave and 5CC carrier aggregation on sub-6GHz. Apart from that, more than 25 countries, including South Korea, Thailand, Italy and Qatar, among others, have already allocated mmWave spectrum.

Further, innovations and technological breakthroughs like Extremely Large Antenna Array (ELAA) are helping the industry rapidly move towards 5.5G. The new ELAA-upgraded MetaAAU is lightweight and provides improved coverage with enhanced energy efficiency. He further mentioned that Huawei recently tested ELAA in the combination of 800MHz in mmWave and 200MHz in the sub-6GHz spectrum. The test recorded a peak throughput of 10 Gbps.

The 6GHz spectrum band is crucial to deploy 5.5G and is helping the industry accelerate its journey to 5.5G. 3GPP has already licensed 6425-7125 MHz bands for 6GHz and it is expected to be identified as IMT band in WRC-23. Further, 5.5G is supported by two regions through the European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations and Arab Spectrum Management Group (ASMG). 5.5G is also supported by Asia Pacific Telecommunity (APT), African Telecommunications Union (ATU) and Regional Commonwealth in the Field of Communications (RCC). These are indications that the telecom industry is realizing the growing relevance of 5.5G and will quickly adopt it to gain new capabilities.

The increased adopted of 5G use cases in industry verticals like healthcare, manufacturing, mining, steel, oil and port has made the demand for Gbps uplink common and regular. The use of IoT is only going to increase in the coming few years, underscoring the need for 5.5G.

All this indicates that the industry is set to fast-track to 5.5G to ensure that they are always able to provide the best-possible experience to the customers and are able to maximize the revenue potential from the emerging market opportunities.

 

 

 

 

Mobile operator Vodafone has today issued an update on their deployment progress under the £1bn Shared Rural Network (SRN) project, which reveals that it has already rolled out 4G (mobile broadband) connectivity across 57 rural locations in England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland under the programme. The SRN is an industry-led scheme – supported by […]

Uswitch.com has unveiled the winners of their annual 2023 Telecoms Awards event, which among things saw Plusnet named as the best LARGE broadband ISP of the year, while Hyperoptic took the same award for smaller providers. Meanwhile, BT was named as the most reliable broadband ISP and giffgaff came top for mobile. The comparison site […]

Alternative broadband ISP toob, which aims to cover 1 million premises across the South of England by 2027 (mostly in Surrey and Hampshire), has joined the growing club of smaller providers that have bucked the trend of recent price hikes by opting to keep their package prices frozen. The operator, which was originally backed by […]

Mobile network operator EE UK has quietly introduced an important change to their 4G and 5G based Pay As You Go (PAYG) plans, which means that customers who joined from 1st March 2023 will have their mobile broadband speeds capped at just 25Mbps – this is advertised as being “Superfast speeds“. In a brief update […]

The National Audit Office has today published an assessment of the progress being made by the UK Government’s 4G based Emergency Services Network (ESN), which finds that it continues to be massively over budget and has “fallen further behind schedule“. In fact, not even the Home Office knows when it’ll be ready, but 2029 or […]

Network builder and UK ISP Zzoomm, which is being backed by Oaktree Capital and aims to cover 1 million premises with their full fibre broadband network by the end of 2025 (they’ve already covered 100,000), has reportedly joined the list of those interested in acquiring fellow network provider Trooli. In case anybody has forgotten, Trooli […]

Press Release

At the Global Industrie trade show held at Lyon’s Parc Eurexpo, ALTEN, Bouygues Telecom Entreprises and Siemens France signed a three-year partnership for the development of Industrial 5G

This partnership between ALTEN, Bouygues Telecom Entreprises and Siemens France is intended to drive the use of industrial 5G in France by pooling their respective expertise and detailed understanding of industrial and network issues. The collaboration beween these three organisations is aimed at CAC 40-listed companies and medium-sized French firms. Its main mission will be to roll out Industry 4.0 solutions by providing dedicated, tailored support for clients in terms of auditing, transformation drivers and implementation.

Bouygues Telecom’s 5G network and private network solutions, guaranteeing the type of connectivity required by Industry 4.0 (very high speed, lower latency, easier object control), will be coupled with Siemens France Customer Services’ IoT solutions and ALTEN’s expertise in practically implementing and integrating these technologies in line with the transformation challenges of customers’ industrial sites. This partnership will enable the industrial scale-up of these new opportunities by ensuring rapid deployment and an optimal return on investment. Similarly, it will facilitate change management among the customer’s employees (technicians, workshop managers, etc.) by delivering interactive training that incorporates 5G knowledge, Siemens’ simulation capabilities and ALTEN’s technological and business expertise.

Joining forces to address the challenges of Industry 4.0, the three companies will create customised support packages incorporating multiple uses of 5G for manufacturers to accelerate the digital transition. This approach, which combines extensive knowledge of industrial and IoT issues with experience of public and private 5G networks, is unprecedented in the French market.

“We wanted to combine our expertise with that of ALTEN and Siemens France in order to better support our industrial customers in their digital transformation processes. Under this partnership, Bouygues Telecom Entreprises will offer connectivity tailored to the needs of different industries, ensuring quality of service, network security and low latency. These industrial 5G networks will be deployed in private, public or hybrid mode and will address different use cases such as the control of critical applications, augmented reality or automated robots, with which IoT and M2M solutions can be combined via our dedicated Objenious brand,” said Jean-Christophe Ravaux, Bouygues Telecom BtoB Market Director

“The latest industrial communication requirements are forcing market players to rethink how their factories and production lines are designed. From ‘augmented’ operators through to predictive maintenance and AGVs, equipment such as our router – which is tailored to the requirements of 5G – can meet such challenges of streamlined resource management, network load and large-scale personalised services for operational performance,” said Vincent Jauneau, Directeur Digital Industries VP Siemens France.

In 2023, the industrial 5G partnership between ALTEN, Bouygues Telecom Entreprises and Siemens France will have four objectives:

Work to evangelise the challenges presented by Industry 4.0 and Industrial 5G
Implement a practical solution for marketing and deploying common solutions by bringing the various business and commercial units closer together;
Build “ready-to-deploy” solutions and use cases in situations where the use of 5G is particularly justified (digital twins, prescriptive maintenance, augmented reality, energy performance, etc.);
Create structured service offerings (digital maturity audit, connectivity audit, training, etc.)

“Our ambition in joining this unprecedented tripartite partnership is to combine human and artificial intelligence to meet the transformation challenges of our clients in the Smart Factory 4.0. In this way, through our strong industry presence and the expertise of our consultants, combined with the technologies of our partners, our customers will benefit from greater flexibility and resilience in production while minimising cost, time and environmental footprint and maintaining a high quality level,” said Gualtiero Bazzana, Directeur Exécutif ALTEN France IT Services.

Manufacturers will have access to demonstrations and practical illustrations of the advantages afforded by the integration of 5G solutions within the three demonstrators (dedicated places) established as part of this partnership, i.e.:

Bouygues Telecom: InnoLab for Enterprise, a demonstrator of private 5G and its use cases, particularly in the industrial sector.
Siemens France: Digital Experience Center (DEC), demonstrators for the manufacturing and process industry. Automation & Industrial IoT technologies.
ALTEN: ALTEN Labs, Factory 4.0 demonstrators for the Manufacturing sector. IT/OT convergence technologies
Through this partnership, ALTEN, Bouygues Telecom Entreprises and Siemens France are joining forces to accelerate the emergence of the industry of the future in France by providing support for French companies in their use of 5G.

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Also in the news:
Viasat–Inmarsat merger gets provisional greenlight from CMA
Verizon shuffles executive team in search of growth
Ericsson to pay DoJ $206.7m over bribery scandal

VIEWPOINT

Microwave transmission is emerging as an important part of 5G deployment, especially so in European and Middle East markets, according to Huawei’s Perry Yang, President of Huawei’s microwave product line.

“Since the beginning of 5G deployment Microwave transmission has become a must for 5G deployment. It has been proven around the world that microwave has accelerated 5G deployment especially in markets such as Europe and the Middle East. It has become one of the most mainstream technologies for 5G backhaul in countries in these regions. And now the performance of Microwave has reached the same level as optical fiber cable,” said Perry Yang in an exclusive interaction with Total Telecom at Mobile World Congress 2023 in Barcelona, Spain.

Factors driving wide adoption of microwave transmission

There are several reasons for the growing relevance of microwave transmission. A key reason is that Microwave has evolved and is much more flexible technology now helping the service providers to address several new-age challenges. “The Microwave industry has witnessed several changes. For instance, it has evolved from single-band to multi-bands and also from single carrier component to multiple carrier components, thus helping service providers to increase capacity and improve network performance,” explains Perry Yang.

Further, microwave backhaul is able to meet the growing demand for capacity and low latency. It is also allowing service providers to provide services in areas where service providers are unable to deploy fiber. “Using Microwave for 5G deployment will help reduce the digital divide. For instance, in areas where fiber might be difficult to deploy Microwave will be the best and the most reliable way for people to access 5G connectivity,” says Perry Yang.

Further, microwave transmission is helping telcos bring down the power consumption. Huawei’s microwave range of solutions are empowering telcos in bringing down their power expenses while improving the efficiency of their network.

Even so, the most crucial reason for the growing adoption of microwave transmission in 5G is the use of E-band (71GHz–76GHz and 81GHz–86GHz) which has now emerged as the most crucial band for microwave deployment.

“5G demands almost 10 times the capacity as compared with LTE and that means that the operators need technology that helps in smooth evolution from 4G to 5G. We know that E band spectrum is as large as 10GHz which allows service providers to provide the required speed, capacity and coverage of 5G. Further, E-band adopts single band architecture and because of low power consumption it is very crucial for 5G,” explains Perry Yang.

He further highlighted the deployment Huawei LR E-band in Germany which demonstrated that Microwave transmission was able to cover a long distance of 7 km, thus helping the service provider in bringing down investment in fiber cable, which can now be used in some other areas. “The next generation of technologies will help telcos enjoy longer distance transmission and reduce cost because now they don’t need to pay that much for power,” said Perry Yang.

The traditional way to increase capacity for microwave transmission is to add more bands. However, that also leads to a more complex architecture and increased power consumption. Telcos also end up paying more for additional band licenses. However, now with the use of E-band for microwave transmission can truly empower the telcos.

Huawei recently introduced MAGICSwave range of solutions which is designed to help service providers address several challenges related to backhaul. Multi-T and multi-R construct with 50Gbps cross-band bandwidth capability ensures that the performance is similar to optical fiber. Further, Perry Yang elaborated that Huawei is also announcing the launch of MAGICSwave which will support the next ten years of evolution for service providers.

“These solutions are not just designed for 5G evolution but they are designed for 5G, 5.5G and will support the service providers with smooth evolution from 4G to 5G and then to 5.5G and even beyond,” says Perry Yang.

Helping Telcos Reduce Power Consumption

Huawei has taken a lead in helping service providers bring down power consumption without impacting the performance. “When the consumption is high microwave will need to provide more capacity but during idle time or at night microwave will not need to provide high capacity. We have technology that can dynamically sense the amount of traffic so during idle time or during night our solutions are able to shut down while ensuring that the services are not interrupted,” says Perry Yang.

“We are also innovating in the architecture of our hardware. These are the kind of innovation we have brought to the market to reduce overall power consumption,” he added.

Huawei hopes that with the launch of truly innovative microwave transmission solutions, it is giving confidence to the industry that microwave transmission technology will help them evolve seamlessly from 4G to 5G to 5.5G and even 6G.