Huawei Middle East & Central Asia and SAMENA Telecommunications Council jointly hosted the 5.5G Leaders’ Summit at Atlantis the Palm, Dubai, UAE, with a theme “10Gbps, Striding towards the 5.5G Era”.
The 5.5G Leaders’ Summit brought together ICT leaders, regulators, industry organisations, including GSMA and WBBA, vendors, enterprises, analysts, chipsets, application ecosystem partners, and other experts to share their ideas, discuss various topics on creating sustainable 5.5G connectivity, and ecosystem aggregation platforms to foster collaboration, accelerate digital economic growth.
Since the first launch of the 5G network almost four years ago, adoption has accelerated in the ME region. 5.5G is the essential upgrade for 5G, a key milestone for the increasingly integrated intelligent world, while 6G is still in early study. It will offer 100 times more business potential with a ten-times-better network experience than 5G.
H.E. Mohammed Al Ramsi, Deputy Director General, TDRA UAE, gave an opening speech at the summit: “Technologies are developing and renewing and presenting us with great challenges and greater opportunities. Providing a sound regulatory environment is crucial for embracing 5.5G’s potential fully. As such, the UAE has taken several steps, including the establishment of the ICT regulatory sandbox.”
“I am quite sure that this session will lead to relevant and actionable insights on how we can leverage 5.5G technology to drive sustainable development and digital innovation in the UAE and globally.”
In his opening speech, Steven Yi, President of Huawei Middle East and Central Asia, said: “Sustainable digital economic growth relies on three powers: transmission, computing, and storage. To build these powers, it is crucial to consistently invest in connectivity infrastructure like 5.5G, prioritise green deployment methods, and foster local digital talent.”
Dr. Philip Song, Chief Marketing Officer of Huawei Carrier BG, delivered the keynote about ‘Striding towards the 5.5G Era,’ stating: “With the arrival of the 5.5G era, people will be able to enjoy true-to-life experience such as 3D video. With the maturity of the RedCap technology and the innovation of the Passive IoT technology, the industry digitalisation process will be accelerated. We hope that all device and application partners, local content partners and policy makers can work together to create more values to society with the 5.5G era.”
In his speech, Martin Creaner, Director General of the World Broadband Association, emphasized: “The WBBA is bringing together service providers, suppliers, users, investors and governments to remove the barriers and help realise the socioeconomic benefits of Giga/10Giga Society for the region.”
During the summit, Rashid Alahmedi, COO of InfraX, said: “5.5G with 10x network capabilities compared to 5G, will address the current technology gaps and enable various digital services in the power grid industry. However, business model innovations based on the new opportunities and close collaboration among stakeholders are key to driving the digital transformation in the power grid as well as many other industry sectors in the 5.5G era.”
Stephen Wilson, Omdia Senior Principal Analyst, delivered a keynote and said: “The demands on broadband networks are developing rapidly, pushed by a combination of rapid growth in connected devices, increasingly bandwidth hungry applications, and greater reliance on the cloud. Service providers need to invest in next-generation broadband technology to not only meet such demand, but also create new business models that will enable future revenue growth and ensure fast RoI.”
As part of this summit, Huawei also launched FWA², a new generation HBB service that is supported by advanced 5.5G technology. During the launch, Vanness You, Vice President of Huawei ME&CA CNBG, said: “With the large-scale commercial use of multi-carrier aggregation terminals and the development of RedCap technology, it’s time to upgrade from FWA standard to FWA². FWA² includes FWA Pro represented by up to 1 Gbps speed, FWA Lite and FWA Biz with the feature of low-cost and high-reliability. This is the first wave of use cases that can be generated by 5.5G.”
At the summit, led by the UAE TDRA, etisalat by e&, du, infraX, Quanray, HTC, Lierda, and Huawei jointly launched the 5.5G OpenLab. The lab is dedicated to building a 5.5G ecosystem alliance, testing ecosystem interoperability, and developing advanced use cases for consumers, homes, and industry sectors.
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