There will be 60 commercial deployments of 4.5G technology in 2016, marking the site of a “golden five-year period” for the standard, Huawei's president of products and solutions Ryan Ding has predicted.
At a pre-MWC media briefing, Ding said the 4.5G standard has a vital role to play as a stopgap technology for 5G. He said the technology is becoming increasingly mature and standardized.
“Based on new terminals, new services and new experiences currently available, 4.5G will deliver a larger bandwidth, shorter time delay and more extensive connections,” he said.
“[The standard] is the natural evolution of 4G and necessary transition to the 5G. It can effectively protect operators’ investments and enable them to provide faster services and better user experience on the basis of existing infrastructures.”
Huawei said it has demonstrated or tested 4.5G technology with more than 20 operators worldwide since proposing the concept in 2014.
As of the end of last year, 1Gbps 4.5G transmissions has been achieved by operators in markets including China, Hong Kong and Singapore.
Korea and the UK have also commenced construction of LTE integrated trunked radio networks, while countries including Korea and China have launched commercial trials of narrowband IoT networks.