Huawei was trumpeting its 5G successes at a product and solution launch in London this morning.
Ryan Ding, the president of the vendor’s carrier business group, delivered a keynote speech highlighting the benefits delivered by 5G.
Ding noted that Huawei has won 47 contracts in Europe – more than half of the 91 commercial contracts that it has won worldwide. Given that the US is openly trying to convince European partners to shun Huawei’s equipment for their 5G buildouts, he was evidently keen to underline the continued business.
Detailing Huawei’s advances in 5G equipment, Ding made the bold claim that the company is 12 – 18 months ahead of its rivals in terms of its 5G technology. He noted that Huawei was focused on delivering the best end-to-end solutions and talked up the advances in both its core and RAN equipment that it achieved during 2019, claiming that Huawei’s equipment was now able to offer 5G speeds that almost double those of its rivals’.
He noted that Huawei has shipped over 600,000 5G Massive MIMO Active Antenna Units (AAUs), which feature the industry's highest-performance 5G base station. The Blade AAU can work under all sub-6 GHz frequency bands and support 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G networks. This addresses the issue of limited space for antenna installation and reduces the total cost of ownership (TCO) by over 30% when compared to existing solutions.
Ding went on to explain that while 4G experience was broadly similar across all operators, players would be able to differentiate their 5G networks using various metrics such as data volume, latency, bandwidth, and number of devices connected. He called on operators to redefine their 5G business models to help them monetise the technology.
