Huawei expects commercial 4.5G deployments from as early as next year, paving the way for mobile data rates of up to 1Gpbs.
At a pre-Mobile World Congress briefing, Huawei vice president of marketing for wireless networks Bob Cai showcased emerging industry applications for 4.5G and outlined a blueprint for evolution to the standard.
New applications including mobile virtual reality glasses, smart metering and drones are expected to drive demand for a stopgap evolution between 4G and 5G, he said.
The bandwidth requirement for true HD virtual reality glasses can be as high as 1Gbps, and 4.5G will be able to meet this requirement, Cai added.
Huwaei's vision for the 4.5G standard includes networks designed to support up to 100,000 connections via LTE-M, 100 times that of LTE, and achieve an end-to-end latency of under 10ms.
“4.5G is a natural evolution of LTE, and supports new business opportunities and an improved user experience through enhancement of the mobile network‘s capacity and capability,” Cai said.
“In the next five years, 4.5G will accelerate incredible industry wide developments, create new and exciting business opportunities, and provide the ultimate user experience.”