China’s Huawei has partnered over 30 global carriers and is forging closer commercial ties with big telecom operators across Europe and Asia to lead the global race for next-generation 5G networks.
The firm announced this at the Mobile World Congress where it also launched its HUAWEI 5G customer-premises equipment (CPE), a commercial terminal device supporting 5G.
According to Ken Hu, Rotating and Acting CEO at Huawei, “Over the years, we have worked with many of you to advance 3G, 4G – and now 5G and other ICT technologies,” he said, ” Huawei has connected over one-third of the world’s population. Since the mobile industry is evolving, it will soon become the cornerstone of a fully connected, intelligent world.”
To ensure peak performance from its 5G CPE supports 5G across all frequency bands including sub-6GHz and millimeter wave (mmWave) to offer a complete 5G solution suitable for multiple use cases. The devices makes Huawei the first company offering an end-to-end 5G solution through its network, devices and chipset-level capabilities.
Since 2009, Huawei has invested US$600 million in research and development into 5G technologies from connected vehicles and smart homes to AR/VR and hologram videos. The firm says it has more than 2,000 5G R&D engineers and 11 5G R&D centers around the world, including three centers in Europe and six centers in China. It has also forged alliances with ecosystem partners from around the world and by March 2016 had more than 30 partners, including leading global carriers, industry alliances, organizations, and vertical leaders.
Huawei has partnered with over 30 global telecommunication carriers, including Vodafone, Softbank, T-Mobile, BT, Telefonica, China Mobile and China Telecom. In 2017, Huawei began testing 5G commercial networks with partners. The Chinese equipment maker is conducting pre-commercial 5G trials in many of the world’s biggest cities, including Seoul, Tokyo, London, Milan and Vancouver in Canada.
Huawei completed interoperability testing and started offering the first round of 5G commercial networks in 2018.