Huawei: 5G is rapidly gathering steam, but we need to focus on sustainability

5G
(Image credit: Google)

The global 5G rollout is quickly gathering pace, paving the way for new consumer experiences and improved productivity across various industries, says Huawei.

According to Ryan Ding, Executive Director of the Board at Huawei, the 5G ecosystem has developed rapidly since rollout first began, driving “remarkable commercial success” for early adopters.

Speaking at an event hosted by Huawei ahead of MWC 2022, Ding said that upwards of 200 mobile operators have now deployed commercial 5G networks, serving more than 700 million end users.

However, he also took the opportunity to call for a tighter focus on green networking technologies, which Ding claims will be “key to the sustainable growth of the digital economy”.

Huawei

(Image credit: Future)

Sustainable 5G networks

Ding dedicated a large portion of his presentation to outlining the ways in which Huawei is helping operators reduce their carbon footprints, as part of a new “green strategy”: more bits, less watts.

The ICT industry will play a crucial role in helping all types of organizations to reduce their energy consumption, Ding says, with new technologies coming out of the sector expected to enable emissions savings ten times greater than its own footprint.

As part of this process, Huawei previously proposed a new metric called the network carbon intensity (NCI) index, which Ding suggests will help bring the company’s green strategy to fruition by eliminating measurement errors caused by variations between network facilities.

From a services perspective, meanwhile, Huawei is offering mobile operators a selection of “green solutions” housed under three categories: green site, green network and green operation. 

Under these schemes, Huawei is helping operators to shift their data centers over to sustainable energy sources, implement intelligent optimizations that improve the efficiency of their networks and more. 

Ding says these solutions, taken together, have the potential to help operators cut back their per bit energy consumption significantly.

MWC (Mobile World Congress) is the world's largest showcase for the mobile industry, stuffed full of the newest phones, tablets, wearables and more. TechRadar is reporting on the show all week. Follow our MWC 2022 live blog for the very latest news as it happens and visit our dedicated MWC 2022 hub for a round-up of the biggest announcements.


Disclaimer: Our flights and accommodation for MWC 2022 were funded by Huawei, but the organization had no editorial control over the content of this article.

Joel Khalili
News and Features Editor

Joel Khalili is the News and Features Editor at TechRadar Pro, covering cybersecurity, data privacy, cloud, AI, blockchain, internet infrastructure, 5G, data storage and computing. He's responsible for curating our news content, as well as commissioning and producing features on the technologies that are transforming the way the world does business.

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