OTTAWA – Chinese communications equipment giant Huawei Technologies is leading the charge on 5G with much of the work being done here in Canada, an effort which is happening a little more than two years after Canadian wireless carriers began rolling out their 4G LTE networks across the country.
The company hosted a gathering of academic researchers and industry stakeholders to discuss 5G on November 13 at its facility in the west end of Ottawa. While still likely a decade away, Huawei is taking 5G seriously with a planned investment of US$600 million by 2018 with the team in Ottawa helping to lead global 5G efforts. By the end of this year, the company expects to contribute more than $2 million in 5G research conducted at a variety of Canadian universities.
Scott Bradley, vice-president of corporate and government affairs at Huawei Canada, acknowledges that despite the fact LTE still has a lot of runway in front of it, now is the time to begin talking about 5G, what it entails and how it could potentially affect a number of industries in the future.
The company’s 5G Vision document states: “5G wireless networks will support 1,000-fold gains in capacity, connections for at least 100 billion devices, and a 10 Gb/s individual user experience capable of extremely low latency and response times. Deployment of these networks will emerge between 2020 and 2030. 5G radio access will be built upon both new radio access technologies (RAT) and evolved existing wireless technologies (LTE, HSPA, GSM and WiFi). Breakthroughs in wireless network innovation will also drive economic and societal growth in entirely new ways. 5G will realize networks capable of providing zero-distance connectivity between people and connected machines.”
“There’s the potential for this being a really transformative or disruptive technology in terms of the change in capacity of the networks and what will be required to handle hyper connectivity. So we need to start thinking about these issues now,” Bradley told Cartt.ca in an interview. “Part of the objective of the event today was, one, to identify how things will evolve over the next seven to 10 years and really, how do we start to prepare for it because it will be transformative.”
Huawei expects 5G to deliver speeds as much as 100 times faster than current LTE networks, or about 10 Gbps. But it’s not just about the significantly increased speeds, it’s how this will affect other industries and the types of applications that will be required to take full advantage of the network.
Bradley underscored the potential ramifications of a 5G network, but noting that “this will mean literally 1,000 points of contact for every person, so that’s a massive transformation.” Asked whether 5G could be equated with the Internet of Things, a concept where everything is connected to everything, Bradley said Huawei looks at it differently.
“We want to move beyond the very basic statement of the Internet of Things to just simply say that we need to recognize that in 10 years time, with 5G you’re going to really start to see a blending of industries and sectors, and the traditional boxes that we put sectors in may not exist 10 years down the road,” he says.
Because it’s still early days in 5G development, activities at Huawei’s facility in Ottawa and projects taking place at universities are focused on foundational research and mapping out specific projects. “A lot of it is looking at trying to put these ideas and concepts on the table and starting to look at how in fact those would apply in terms of developing equipment, or hardware or those tools that would allow you in fact to do the things that we think we’ll be able to get done,” Bradley says.
It’s no secret that Huawei has encountered serious difficulties in the United States as a result of allegations that deploying the company’s equipment could lead to Chinese government spying in North America. Canada’s own security agencies have also expressed concern about the firm.
Bradley acknowledges the problems that Huawei has been subjected to Stateside, but notes events over the past year have revealed that “the issue is much broader than just Huawei… People try to generate smoke from time to time,” he says, adding that the reality is that the company is working openly and transparently with customers and governments, and is investing and creating jobs in Canada.
“We’re going to continue to try our best to strive to do the things that Canadians, our customers and I would suspect governments expect to see from us,” he says. “Yes, perceptions for some people aren’t going to change overnight, but we have to try our best to do the right things in ways that we operate as a company and you hope at the end of the day, people start to pay attention.”
