Ryan Ding, who heads Huawei’s carrier business group, said in London that the growth, which will be driven by 5G, will mean backhaul to towers has to be increased tenfold from a typical 1Gbps now to 10Gbps.
“Adoption of 5G will be quicker than 3G or 4G,” Ding told Capacity in an interview at the vendor’s Global Mobile Broadband Forum.
He said that on launch only 3% of the population had access to 3G, while 9% could use 4G when it was launched. But because 5G will share masts and infrastructure, “33% of the global population” will be able to access 5G on launch. And “in three years 5G budget smartphones will be on the market”, he added. “It took nine years for 3G to reach a billion users and six years for 4G. What will happen with 5G? We will soon find out.”
What will consumers use it for? Gaming will be the big market, where low latency will give those connected via 5G a significant edge over 4G customers. The target latency for 5G is 1ms, compared with a typical 40-60ms for 4G.
That will also drive the adoption of cloud-based virtual reality (VR), he added. Current VR kit requires a heavy headset and a high-performance personal computer costing around $3,000. Retail prices of headsets will be $200 to $600, depending on the image definition, with the computing in the cloud via a 5G link. “VR and gaming with 8K video will be massive for 5G,” Ding told Capacity. “But for that we’ll need massive bandwidth on the backhaul.”
But 5G handsets will also be able to operate as cloud-based virtual personal computers. Ding showed Capacity a Huawei 4G handset running Windows 10 in the cloud. “You’ll need to connect a keyboard and a screen,” he said. “We’ve already launched services in China. The latency on this is terrible – I’m using a Hong Kong SIM card and it’s connecting from there into China.” But with 5G “you will have everything in the cloud as long as you have low latency”.
Huawei has already signed 5G contracts with 22 commercial operators, he said, including five in the Middle East, three in the Asia Pacific and 14 in Europe. Among European customers, BT’s EE and CK Hutchison’s Three UK are both showcasing 5G services – and both Telefónica, which owns O2 UK, and Vodafone were also taking part in the London event.
