Huawei became the latest vendor to join the “5G” war of words, stating that it is “at the cutting edge of technology exploration and development for 5G wireless” – despite the fact that as yet there is no official definition of what the term actually means.

Last month, Samsung said it had developed 5G technology which it would look to commercialise by 2020.

While Samsung’s recent release highlighted some of the specific technologies it is working with, Huawei’s was more marketing driven. It said it is “working on prototyping and have conducted field trials on cloud-based radio access networks”.

Wen Tong, head of Huawei Communications Technologies Labs, said: “5G wireless will, first of all, open the frontiers of a new end-user experience. For example, visual communication will become the mainstream, and people will use wireless devices to interact instantly with people remotely, as if they were meeting face-to-face.”

“5G wireless will also wirelessly connect an enormous number of “things” to the network. Therefore, in combination with cloud computing and Big Data technologies, we can essentially automate the entire society,” he continued.

Huawei said that it is “actively participating in and driving broader industry ecosystem collaborations”, for example working with the METIS project co-funded by the European Commission.

It said that at a recent METIS project meeting more than 140 researchers from industry, carriers and universities met to “crack the foundational technologies that will enable 5G wireless to come about”.