• Huawei hosted the global launch of its 5G-A Pioneers Program at MWC Shanghai 2024 this week.
• The Chinese company has outlined its ambitions for 5G Advanced, which it plans to have first commercial deployment for this year.
• Huawei and its industry partners have agreed on six areas where 5G Advanced will play a part moving forward.

While we are yet to see the full potential of 5G reached in countries like South Africa, or indeed 5.5G, Huawei is wasting little time in developing the ecosystem that will support the next level of mobile broadband – 5G Advanced (5G-A).

This week at MWC Shanghai 2024 the company hosted its Global Launch of 5G-A Pioneers Program. Naturally the theme for the launch was “driving shared success with 5G-A”.

The event saw Huawei engage with several of the top 5G operators from around the world (all pictured above), along with including three of China’s largest networks.

They were joined by the likes of HKT, du, and Oman Telecommunications, highlighting that those regions are certainly ahead of South Africa when it comes to readiness for 5G Advanced at the moment.

Although we are already halfway through the year, 2024 is still expected to be a significant one for 5G Advanced, with Huawei noting that the first commercial deployments of 5G-A are expected to happening before the year’s end.

“In 2024, leading operators in the Middle East and China have started to deploy 5G-A networks, with some of them already launching differentiated experience-based 5G-A packages,” it shared in a release with Hypertext.

“2024 marks the beginning of the mobile AI era thanks to the commercial launch of 5G-A and other AI devices. These technologies will be the key to making intelligent services ubiquitous. This era will transform not only human-machine interaction, but also content production and mobile devices, and will revitalize society and create opportunities for the mobile industry,” explained Huawei’s executive director of the Board and chairman of the ICT Infrastructure Managing Board, David Wang.

“At Huawei, we will continue to accelerate 5G-A development from both the ‘Networks for AI’ and the ‘AI for Networks’ perspectives to create new business value. Huawei looks forward to working with all industry stakeholders to seize the enormous opportunities presented by the mobile AI era to shape the intelligent world,” he added in his keynote at MWC Shanghai 2024.

Along with highlighting the importance of developing a 5G Advanced-focused ecosystem, Huawei and its operator partners jointly announced the six specific consensuses via the the 5G-A Pioneers Program.

These consensuses are areas where the value of advanced 5G-A capabilities will be maximised, according to Huawei, along with promote 5G-A development, and further advance the industry. These six consensuses are, “Pioneer Operators, Pioneer Cities, Business Model Upgrade, High-quality Networks, Service Innovation, and Thriving Ecosystems.”

“Moving forward, Huawei will continue to support operators’ innovation efforts in networks, services, and ecosystems, and help them build differentiated competitiveness in the 5G-A era. Their ultimate goal is to promote high-quality industry development and enable the digital and intelligent transformation for a better and more intelligent world,” the company emphasised.

What this means for those in South Africa and the rest of the African continent, remains to be seen, but we may see Huawei unpack more of its plans around 5G, Net5.5G, as well as 5G-A at this year’s Africa Tech Festival in November.