5G achieves as much in first three years as 4G did in first five years

The achievements made by 5G in its first three years are equivalent to that 4G made in its first five years, according to Peng Song, president of Huawei’s ICT Strategy and Marketing.
Leading operators are already celebrating the success of the first round of 5G development, which has instilled a sense of certainty and confidence in the industry, he said, adding 5G will thus sustain this success if its value can be further unleashed in ToC, ToH, and ToB sectors.
In his keynote address at the Mobile World Congress at Barcelona; he said operators reporting over 20% 5G user penetration during the first round of deployment have seen significant growth in mobile revenue.
In the meantime, devices, content, experience, and business models are diversifying as more operators and partners embrace 5G.
“This is evidence of a market shift from risk-based to revenue-based decision-making for even more assurance of business success. Huawei’s MI team found that fast migration of 5G users and traffic is the key: if an operator migrated 30% of traffic to 5G eMBB in three years, it would take less than four years to see ROI. This duration would be even shorter if the operator also deployed FWA and ToB services,” he said.
By the end of 2022, 95 operators had commercially launched 5G FWA services for more than 10mn home users.
With its fast deployment, good experience, low cost, and high energy efficiency, 5G FWA sunsets old copper lines in developed markets and enables home broadband access in emerging markets.
According to him, operators in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa have reported “outstanding” results. Song believes that operators can set up extensive service connections with enterprises through 5G private networks, creating a market space for enterprise digital transformation that is three to ten times larger than the market for private networks themselves.
“This will also drive the sales of cloud, data centre, F5G, and other value-added services.
The current 5G ToB private network market outside China is developing rapidly. In 2022 alone, the total number of networks built doubled. This future potential is even bigger,” he added.
According to the latest GSMA and GSA statistics, by December 2022, more than 240 5G networks had been put into commercial use worldwide, over 1,700 different types of 5G terminals had been released, and the number of 5G users had exceeded 1bn. In addition, the ARPU of the world’s top 20 operators had increased by 10%, which is 1% higher than the global baseline.
5G is not just about economic value to operators, but also huge social value. Huawei calls on global operators and industry partners to join its GUIDE business blueprint and further unleash the potential of 5G networks from “5Good to 5Great”.