Huawei claims it’s the only ‘end-to-end’ 5G vendor

Ryan Ding, Huawei's Executive Director of the Board and Carrier BG CEO.   Source: Huawei

Ryan Ding, Huawei's Executive Director of the Board and Carrier BG CEO. Source: Huawei

  • It’s just launched two 5G chips to reinforce that claim
  • One chip can do remarkable things for base stations
  • The other supports all the ‘G’s and can download at up to 4.6 Gbps

Huawei might be taking a drubbing in the headlines, with equipment bans (Australia, New Zealand, possibly Germany) a partial ban by the UK, and of course it does have a senior executive arrested for fraud. Hard times ahead?

Perhaps some belt-tightening looms, but as ‘real’ 5G build-outs near it looks most probable that Huawei’s 5G sales will hold up and may even accelerate. Portugal, for instance, has actually placed an order and the UK’s major mobile networks, along with many others,  are either trialing or have already trialed Huawei infrastructure. In fact Huawei claims it has already won 30 commercial 5G contracts and shipped over 25,000 5G base stations globally. H

Many telcos have been working very closely with the company since it first put its hand up about 20 or so years ago and asked to come inside. As a result Huawei is deeply embedded in the various telecoms standards-setting bodies and is seen as a valued contributor.

The world’s telcos are therefore highly unlikely to simply sever all ties and walk away without a major scuffle with their respective governments. They will certainly point out forcefully that if their political masters want their countries to figure highly in the 5G rankings, banning Huawei isn’t going to help.

This situation has to be understood in the context of the modern ‘relationships’ forged between telcos and suppliers. Look at any number of TelecomTV videos concerning ecosystems, customer relationships, collaboration and so on, to see how important these are in the context of cloudification. Nobody sells infrastructure elements by delivering kit and waving bye-bye any more. It’s all about close collaboration, sharing information, seconding employees and DevOps (not necessarily in that order).

Huawei has also been doing well in smartphones, producing arguably one of the world’s most advanced smarties with the Mate 20 and, mid-way through last year, becoming the world’s second-largest smartphone vendor. It’s not going anywhere.

As a 5G pioneer, Huawei began research and development in 5G as early as 2009, and is currently the industry's only vendor that can provide end-to-end 5G systems. Huawei has more than 5,700 engineers dedicated to 5G R&D, including over 500 5G experts.

This technology triumph continues. Today Huawei has launched two significant 5G chipsets. It’s claiming the world's first core chip specifically designed for 5G base stations, called the Huawei TIANGANG; plus it’s launched a 5G multi-mode chipset, Balong 5000 for devices.

It claims it has end-to-end 5G chips supporting networks of all standards and all bands (C band, 3.5G, and 2.6G), and so has industry-leading capabilities to deliver a complete 5G solution, including simplified operations & maintenance (O&M).

Huawei claims the TIANGANG is  highly integrated, which means it can support large-scale integration of active power amplifiers (PAs) and passive antenna arrays into very small antennas. It can support beamforming technology and a single chip can control up to 64 channels (the highest number in the industry). It can also support the 200 MHz high spectral bandwidth being readied for future deployment.

With this chip inside, claims Huawei, 5G base stations can be deployed in just half the time it took to install a 4G base station. All base station units use the blade form factor, and different modules can be combined as needed.

Huawei has also launched the world's first data center switch with an AI brain, it claims. This switch enables zero Ethernet packet loss and end-to-end latency of less than 10 milliseconds. Huawei claims that it consumes less than 8W of power while delivering more computing capacity than 25 mainstream two-way CPU servers combined.

Multi-mode Chipset

Huawei has also announced its 5G multi-mode chipset, Balong 5000, along with the first commercial 5G device powered by it, the Huawei 5G CPE Pro, designed to support a broad range of 5G products in addition to smartphones, including home broadband devices, vehicle-mounted devices, and 5G modules.

Balong 5000 supports 2G, 3G, 4G, and 5G on one chip. It effectively reduces latency and power consumption when exchanging data between different modes. At Sub-6 GHz (low-frequency bands, the main spectrum used for 5G), Balong 5000 can achieve download speeds up to 4.6 Gbps. On mmWave spectrum (high-frequency bands used as extended spectrum for 5G), Balong 5000 can achieve download speeds up to 6.5 Gbps - 10 times faster than top 4G LTE speeds on the market today.

It’s also claimed to be the world's first chipset that supports both standalone (SA) and non-standalone (NSA) network architectures for 5G. With non-standalone, 5G network architecture is built on top of legacy 4G LTE networks, whereas standalone 5G, as the name implies, will have its own independent architecture. Balong 5000 can flexibly meet different user and carrier requirements for connecting devices throughout different stages of 5G development.

Huawei's 5G smartphones powered by Balong 5000 will be released at this year's Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Huawei claims.

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