5G-A – A true enabler of Saudi Arabia economic transformation
MWC Shanghai 2024 runs from 26 to 28 June at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre. The event focuses on 5.5G, AI, and digital transformation to strengthen extensive cooperation across the ICT industry value chain. Huawei is one of the critical global vendors participating in the event to showcase its latest products and solutions.
“On Day 1, Huawei hosted the Global Launch of the 5G-A Pioneers Program. The event, themed” Driving Shared Success with 5G-A”, brought together pioneering 5G operators worldwide to discuss how to drive the high-quality development of 5G-A networks and seize opportunities from the upcoming intelligent world to create new market space for growth.”On Day 1, Huawei hosted the Global Launch of the 5G-A Pioneers Program. The event, themed “Driving Shared Success with 5G-A”, brought together pioneering 5G operators worldwide to discuss how to drive the high-quality development of 5G-A networks and seize opportunities from the upcoming intelligent world to create new market space for growth.
Over the past five years, 5G has driven rapid changes in the industry, networks, and technologies. These changes are helping us accelerate ever faster towards 5G-A. 5G comes with much more robust capabilities and a much better experience. The application and promotion of 5G-Advanced (5G-A) and AI foundation models are accelerating the intelligent upgrade of societies, which produces synergy and changes how industries deliver products and people consume products. Currently, Saudi Arabia is at the forefront of 5G-A deployment.
The application and promotion of 5G-A and AI foundation models are accelerating the intelligent upgrade of societies, which produces synergy and changes how industries deliver products and people consume products. People will embrace a comprehensively intelligent life and interact with machines in a multimodal way, while machines will interact with each other in a revolutionary way. Moving from HD voice to HD video to real-time AI interaction and from HD to panoramic to 3D are just two examples of the overall experience shift with 5G-A.
“With the development of 5G-A, consumers will soon see the dividends brought by technological innovation, and operators will shift from traffic monetization to experience monetization. In this speech, David Wang, Huawei’ss Executive Director of the Board and Chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board, noted, “5G-A will be the path forward. It will protect vested investment while creating new business opportunities by expanding business boundaries. As we look towards 2030, the industry will need to ramp up efforts to reinforce 5G-A technologies and support the healthy development of 5G. This is how we will ensure a prosperous 5G industry in the long term and improve the world. Huawei looks forward to working with the sector to build healthy 5G-A ecosystems, upgrade 5G-A standards, and share in the benefits of 5G-A development. Together, we will bring the intelligent world into reality faster.
2024 marks the first year of 5G-A commercialization and a milestone in AI development. Synergies across networks, cloud, and intelligence are set to give rise to pervasive intelligent applications and increasingly diverse user experiences.
5G-A is far more than an upgrade from 5G. It means a more diversified, more convenient, and more intelligent life. 5G-A networks integrate communications and sensing capabilities, accelerating the development of the low-altitude economy. 5G-A also introduces passive IoT, which uses passive tags and sensors to implement communications between devices. Passive IoT has no built-in power supply and is cost-effective and easy to deploy at scale. It will boost the number of industrial IoT connections from 10 billion to 100 billion and connect everything in people’s life, such as clothes and keys.
5G-A marks a new era of Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications. 5G-A will truly enter industrial production networks with 4 ms latency and 99.999% reliability, meeting the basic requirements of industrial production networks and fulfilling the vision of 5G changing societies. 5G-A will also deliver a 10 Gbps network capability and experience. 5G-A will lead the industry into a new era of experience monetization, from inclusive services to differentiated services, to meet the diversified needs of people. Telecom foundation models drive the evolution towards L4 high-level automation, improving network productivity.5G-A supports long-term evolution and continuously innovates application scenarios and upgrades service experience.
Being one of the first 5G explorers and beneficiaries, Saudi Arabia attaches great importance to 5G-A and gets a head start in 5G-A deployment. For operators, 5G-A is a significant opportunity to improve network performance and user experience and a key platform for exploring new business models and achieving service growth. As conventional services are gradually saturated, 5G-A has become the key for operators in Saudi Arabia to explore new sources of growth.
Facilitating digital transformation throughout society is one of the critical enablers for realizing many of the goals of the Vision 2030 plan. To achieve the best outcomes, the country is keen to establish a robust and superior digital infrastructure that accelerates the Kingdom’s overall digital transformation and lays the foundation for a Future Intelligent World. 5G-A is a crucial enabler.
Saudi Arabia is positioning itself as a global pioneer and regional leader in innovation and technology investment, mainly through its ambitious Vision 2030 national plan. In this regard, the KSA has been actively supporting the roll-out of advanced digital architecture. As a helpful analogy, the 10Gbps Society creates an intelligent and connected world, elevates ICT services, and supports scenarios for connected individuals, homes, and enterprises. The growing demand for advanced services necessitates network upgrades, which are vital for ambitious projects like Saudi Arabia’s 10Gbs Society. Government-supportive policies will incentivize carriers and enterprises to invest in infrastructure optimization.
With high ambitions for economic transformation, Saudi Arabia takes the lead in 5G-A deployment. Saudi Arabia Vision 2030 puts the digital economy at the core of the national strategic development plan. The Kingdom has been actively deploying 5G. As a result, FTTH now covers 3.7 million households across the country, and 5G covers more than 90% of the population, even including people in remote areas.
5G-A is a true enabler of Saudi Arabia’s 10Gbps Society and digital transformation of all industries, paving the way for a sustainable digital economy. The fruits of successful government and private sector collaborations in key enablers like 5G-A have become an integral part of Saudi Arabia’s ICT ecosystem.
Following its ‘Openness and Collaboration for Shared Success’ approach, Huawei will explore exciting topics at this year’s MWC Shanghai with global operators, industry professionals, and opinion leaders. These include amplifying 5 G’s success in the 5.5G era and tapping into the potential of operator revenue growth to bring us even faster to the intelligent world.
