Afcacia

Huawei technologies has ramped up the use of 5G by telecommunications operators with the Fixed Wireless Access (FWA) nodes emerging as a favorite over copper connections.

Speaking when he addressed the 5G Business Success Summit at this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC), Peng Song, President of Huawei’s ICT Strategy & Marketing, said at the end of 2022, 95 operators had commercially launched 5G FWA services for more than 10 million home users. In Kenya for instance, less than 200,000 homes have wi fi connectivity. In addition, the Average Revenue Per User of the world’s top 20 operators had increased by 10%, which is 1% higher than the global baseline with Safaricom, Kenya’s largest mobile operator rising by 2.1 per cent in 2022 to Kshs 307.

Referencing the latest data from the GSMA and GSA, Peng pointed out that by December 2022 more than 240 5G networks had been put into commercial use worldwide, over 1,700 different types of 5G terminals had been released, and the number of 5G users had exceeded 1 billion.

“With its fast deployment, good experience, low cost, and high energy efficiency, 5G FWA sunsets old copper lines in developed markets and enables home broadband access in emerging markets. Operators in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have reported outstanding results”, said Peng.

In his keynote speech titled ‘Diverse Paths to 5G Monetization, accelerating 5G Business Success’, Peng noted that the popularity of 5G technology lay in its ability to cut the payback period for and mobile operators.

“Operators reporting over 20% 5G user penetration during the first round of deployment have seen significant growth in mobile revenue and if an operator migrated 30% of traffic to 5G in three years, it would take less than four years to obtain a return on their investments.

This duration would be even shorter if the operator also deployed FWA. 5G networks can also provide differentiated experience for different users. For example, operators can provide guaranteed downlink bit rates for VIP users and a good experience for uplink services.

In addition, operators can set up extensive service connections with enterprises through 5G private networks, creating a market space for enterprise digital transformation that is three to ten times larger than the market for private networks themselves. This will also drive the sales of cloud, data center, F5G, and other value-added services.