A strong focus at the Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2021 (MWCS 2021) was on how the telecom industry will transform and how communication technologies can be upgraded to meet the needs of 5G vertical applications, Digitimes Research has observed.
Vertical commercial applications will bring real benefits to China's 5G network deployments, given the number of the country's 5G service users has surpassed 200 million, and it has already installed 718,000 5G base stations.
Huawei reiterated its "5.5G" definition for the 5G technology. In addition to three traits of 5G applications - eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband), mMTC (massive machine type communications) and URLLC (ultra reliable low latency communication) - the Chinese vendor believes that 5G can be improved by adding other features, such as uplink centric broadband communication (UCBC), real-time broadband communications (RTBC) and harmonized communication and sensing (HCS).
MWCS 2021 also highlighted the 5G vertical application market, focusing on C-V2X, industrial IoT (IIoT), unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) systems and mmWave applications.
China has promoted its national C-V2X standards since 2017 and has also established 16 national demonstration fields for C-V2X applications. It plans to roll out at least nine C-V2X-capable vehicles in 2020-2022. Meanwhile, China Mobile has begun to deploy integrated 5G+C-V2X RSU (roadside unit) base stations.
For IIoT development, there is greater demand for improved 5G connectivity for AMR (autonomous mobile robot)/AGR (automated guided vehicle) applications. Meanwhile, ZTE showcased an ATG (air to ground) designated network for high-speed, large-broadband width transmission utilizing both 5G sub-6GHz and mmWave technologies.
