Huawei developing 5G technology with a view to launching in 2020

Chinese telecoms firm has 200 people working on the project

Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has said that it is working on 5G technology, which will be ready for use by 2020.

5G is expected to offer a wireless connection speed similar to current fixed-line fibre broadband networks, at a time when the "internet of things" will supposedly be the norm.

The widespread adoption of 5G may be more than seven years away but it is still one of the top priorities in Huawei's research and development investment, according to Tong Wen, the company's 5G technology chief.

Wen, who was speaking to the Wall Street Journal, said that Huawei started work on its 5G network technology in 2009, and presently has 200 people working on the project.

He said that the deployment of 5G networks would encounter many key challenges, such as access to much more spectrum than is currently available to mobile operators.

Huawei is one of many firms working on 5G. In May, South Korean handset maker Samsung claimed to have developed the core technology behind 5G mobile telecommunications based on extremely high-frequency radio communications dubbed mmWave.

Samsung said its 5G technology enables downloads in the region of 1Gbps over distances of up to 1.2 miles. This compares to current 4G networks which offer a typical download speed of 10Mbps. Earlier this month, EE switched on its double-speed 4G in 12 UK cities, which it claims has average speeds of 24-30Mbps.

The UK is still awaiting the rollout of 4G services from mobile operators to compete with EE's 4G network. Vodafone is expected to rollout 4G services by "the end of the summer", and O2 is expected to wait until the end of the year to launch its own 4G service.

But communications regulator Ofcom has already started thinking about 5G.

An Ofcom spokesman told Computing: "We're doing work around clearing the 700MHz band but this is long-term work which is a work in progress and will probably take a number of years."