Worldwide TD/FD-LTE network standards and related supply chains are turning mature, and telecom carriers have been focusing on expanding their 4G network coverage. Despite the fact the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2016 attracted over 100,000 visitors, the event did not showcase many new network communication innovations or any major breakthroughs in communication technology or concepts.
Digitimes Research believes MWC 2016's weak presentation showed that the market has already entered the post-4G mobile broadband generation and network re-optimization and emerging business opportunities have become the key concepts and consensus between network players for achieving results in 2016.
Re-optimization of 4G networks has become a hot topic for network technology and application developers. During the post-4G mobile broadband generation, to go faster and wider are two major directions for optimization. To achieve faster networks, integrating licensed spectra such as LAA/LWA/LTE-U with non-licensed spectra such as Wi-Fi and using LTE-A Pro technology such as Massive MIMO/QAM are two main methods. As for wider networks achieving more coverage, pushing Smallcell setups and LPWAN network technology are key, especially NB-IoT technology, a key technology developed based on cellular IoT applications under LPWAN.
5G networks are still at the initial stage of standards setting, but many developers still showcased 5G product prototypes, and some 5G technologies such as mmWave during MWC. Many large network communication equipment makers and telecom carriers also demonstrated simulated 5G applications.
Although the Internet of Things (IoT) for vehicles or smart homes are not new concepts, many players showcased related products, and the only difference between them was the back-end data analysis at the cloud computing side, not hardware specifications.
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