Huawei joins Samsung in push for 5G in Europe by 2020

Handset manufacturers, mobile carriers and the EU work together on next-generation mobile networks

Chinese hardware manufacturer Huawei has joined Samsung and the EU in pushing for usable 5G networks by the beginning of the next decade.

With the ever increasing pressure on mobile networks to handle large data transfers such as video and photo uploads on sharing services like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, Huawei expects data demands to increase 1,000-fold in the next 10 years.

5G networks could provide speeds of up to 10Gbps, which is around 500 times faster than EE's current average 4G speeds.

Dr Wen Tong, head of Huawei's technology labs, believes one of the biggest new demands will be a rise in face-to-face video conferencing: "5G wireless will, first of all, open the frontiers of a new end-user experience," he explained. "For example, visual communication will become the mainstream, and people will use wireless devices to interact instantly with people remotely, as if they were meeting face-to-face."

Huawei's research into 5G is taking place at its 2012 Laboratories, while the company as a whole is actively participating in project METIS (Mobile and wireless communications Enablers for the Twenty-twenty Information Society). The project, which is co-funded by the European Commission and partnered with several European mobile carriers such as Orange, targets a European ‘consensus' on mobile networks by 2020, and includes a push for 5G data transfer.

There are several new technology requirements for a rollout of 5G, which Huawei is also working on, according to Tong: "Our researchers are studying the new radio link technologies and new radio access network architecture," he said. "We are also working on prototyping and have conducted field trials on cloud-based radio access networks (so called Cloud-RAN). We are playing a leading role in 5G wireless technology development."

The EU invested a further €50m into 5G research projects earlier this year and the UK government revealed plans last October to launch a £35m 5G research centre.

This comes as 4G networks are still rolling out around the UK, with EE the only provider currently offering 4G data plans. In March, EE increased its 4G reach into 50 more UK towns and cities, and plans to expand to 70 percent of the country by the end of 2013. O2 and Vodafone are expected to begin launching their own 4G networks later this year.