Targeting higher traffic speed

Huawei is also working with regional telecom operators to adopt an evolutionary business strategy that protects and maximises the potential of 4G investments and also cultivates market demand for 5G. 5G is the fifth generation cellular technology after 4G. The industry has not defined the specification for 5G but the focus is on more bandwidth and higher traffic speed and is expected to become a reality by 2020.

Currently with 4G, the latency rate is around 50 milliseconds, but 5G will reduce that to about one millisecond and with faster data speeds of up to 10Gbps.

Pan said that 5G technology is expected to become a “critical infrastructure” in a super-connected world, supporting 1,000-fold gains in network capacity and providing the necessary backbone for future Smart City projects in the Middle East. While the standardisation of 5G will begin in 2016, 5G technology has been a hot industry topic for quite some time.

“We have also signed a memorandum of understanding to explore super-speed 5G services with one of the region’s leading telecom operators. Huawei is also working with operators to trial and implement 4.5G services — an important bridge between today’s 4G LTE networks and the 5G era,” he said.

Huawei is investing more than $600 million (Dh2.2 billion) in the research of 5G technology by 2018.

Huawei annually invests an average of more than 10 per cent of its total revenue into research and development (R&D) with the company maintaining a total of 16 R&D centres.

The Chinese company’s R&D expenditure totalled about $6.6 billion in 2014.