Walid Mathlouthi (pictured), who joined the ITU in January after seven years at Google in California, said at a conference this week that spectrum will be crucial for future development, especially in mobile communications and 5G to 5.5G evolution.
“It is important for unified standards to be adopted worldwide,” said Mathlouthi. “Relevant spectrum guidelines will be released at the World Radiocommunication Conference (WRC) at the end of 2023.”
The next WRC is scheduled for Dubai, starting in late November 2023, and will run for three weeks.
Mathlouthi predicted that 5.5G will be put into commercial use in 2025, just two years after the WRC.
He was addressing a conference on innovation in Shenzhen, China, held by Huawei
Wang Qi, the vendor’s chief marketing officer for its 5.5G efforts, said 5.5G will support 100 billion connections and ubiquitous 10Gbps connectivity.
“5G will continuously evolve toward 5.5G with enhancements such as 10 times faster connectivity and stronger IoT and sensing capabilities,” said Wang at the conference.
He said he believes that 10Gbps downlink speeds and millisecond-level latency “will help bridge the virtual and physical worlds”, and that passive internet of things (IoT) “will enable hundreds of billions of connections, and that integrated sensing and communication technologies will provide capabilities beyond connectivity”.
Lin Yanqing, a senior policy expert on government affairs at Huawei, said that healthy development of 5.5G will require an industry-wide consensus and standards. Openness and cooperation are still critical to global development, especially in the field of science and technology. Strengthening cooperation and coordinating and unifying technical standards will allow more industry players to share the development opportunities of the global digital economy.
