[Barcelona, Spain, February 25, 2024] Today, during MWC24 in Barcelona, Huawei hosted the "5G Beyond Growth Summit" summit. At the event, Li Peng, Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales and Service at Huawei, shared insights on how operators can achieve commercial success in the 5G era and elaborated on how 5G-A will further unleash network potential and create new growth opportunities.
Commercial success in 5G is underway. In the five years since its commercialization, the global 5G user base has surpassed 1.5 billion, equivalent to the development achievements of 4G over nine years. Simultaneously, 5G, with 20% of global mobile users, contributes to 30% of mobile traffic and 40% of mobile service revenue.
"2024 marks the commercial year of 5G-A. With the development of cloud and AI technologies, there is enormous potential for operator business growth," said Li Peng, highlighting four strategic opportunities that global operators can seize.
Huawei Senior Vice President and President of ICT Sales and Service, Mr. Li Peng
Quality Networks: The Foundation of Business Success
A robust network forms the cornerstone of achieving business success. High-quality networks facilitate seamless user migration and enhance overall experience, leading to the harvest of traffic dividends. An increasing number of operators are setting strategic goals to build optimal 5G networks. For instance, a Middle Eastern operator has constructed a nationwide Massive MIMO network, fostering tremendous success in 5G FWA (Fixed Wireless Access) services due to superior experiences. The number of household connections has nearly reached 3 million, becoming a crucial revenue driver for operators.
Monetizing Multi-dimensional Experiences: Unveiling the Value of Each Bit
Presently, over 20% of global 5G operators employ rate-based billing. A Thai operator has introduced 5G hotspot acceleration packages, allowing users to subscribe on-demand for specific time periods, resulting in a 23% increase in ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). In China, operators have rolled out experience assurance packages tailored for network anchors, enhancing the clarity and fluidity of live streaming experiences. Welcomed by anchors, this package has propelled ARPU values by over 70%.
Li Peng delivers opening speech at summit
Emergence of new businesses continues to support sustained growth towards the future
Consumer-facing new services like New Talk, Cloud Phone, and Naked-eye 3D are gaining popularity. New Talk users are keen on using value-added features like "personal virtual avatars" and are also more willing to pay for real-time experiences like "one-stop car insurance claims."
5G is also being widely adopted by enterprise users. In China, 5G private networks have been deployed in over 50 industries with more than 50,000 use cases. The new capabilities of 5G-A, such as deterministic latency, precise positioning, and passive IoT, will create more opportunities for operators in the B2B market.
Generative AI drives mobile industry towards comprehensive intelligence
IDC predicts that by 2024, shipments of AI-enabled smartphones will reach 170 million units, accounting for 15% of the global smartphone shipments. Next-generation AI smartphones will have more powerful storage, display, and imaging capabilities, generating hundreds of billions of gigabytes of content in synergy with AIGC applications, bringing new growth opportunities to operators.
Li Peng stated that Huawei is willing to work with operators to fully unleash the potential of 5G and 5G-A networks, stimulating new growth.
MWC24 will be held in Barcelona, Spain, from February 26th to 29th. Huawei's exhibition area is located at booth 1H50 in Fira Gran Via 1. 2024 marks the commercialization year of 5G-A. Huawei will work together with global operators and partners to promote collaborative innovation in "network-cloud-intelligence," drive deepening digital transformation, prosper the industry ecosystem, accelerate the commercial positive cycle of 5G, and embrace a more prosperous era of 5G-A. For more details, please visit: https://carrier.huawei.com/cn/events/mwc2024
