PRESS RELEASE: At Huawei Global Analyst Summit 2023, one of the key takeaways from the 5G Business Success session was that leading operators have achieved business success as 5G has developed over the past four years, and that even greater success is expected in the near future as the industry matures. In the session, Marvin Chen, Chief Strategy Officer of Wireless Network at Huawei, Pan Guixin, Chief Innovation Officer and General Manager of Network Product Innovation Center at China Unicom Guangdong Branch, Baran Yurdagul, VP Consumer of Omantel, and Tim Hatt, Head of Research and Consulting at GSMAi, shared their experiences of pursuing 5G business success and discussed new 5G business opportunities with some of the top wireless analysts from around the world.

Marvin pointed out how rapidly the 5G ecosystem is booming. 5G attracted 1 billion users in just three years. For comparison, it took five years for 4G to reach the same milestone. Thanks to favorable 5G industry policies, rapid 5G network deployment, and the comprehensive development of 5G services in the consumer, home, and business sectors, leading operators have seen significant revenue growth, and have been able to continue promoting 5G development. In the future, the powerful network capabilities of 5G will become more accessible to ecosystem partners, increasing monetization channels for operators and further promoting prosperity in the 5G industry. Huawei has joined CAMARA, an open API project, and is committed to becoming a major contributor.
Pan explained that evolving networks help China Unicom Guangdong Branch jump to 5G U-Joy Cities 2.0 thanks to new technological, capability, and applications breakthroughs. More extensive 5G technologies provide more tools to drive innovations for 5.5G. More complete 5G capabilities help collaborate and synergize with other industry players so that can expand to broadband, computing power, government and enterprise services, and other new domains. Broadening 5G applications help extend 5G U-Joy Cities program to many other cities in the Greater Bay area and beyond. Ultimately, this is helping to promote digital transformation across China.

Yurdagul spoke about how 5G commercialization has sharply increased the proportion of Omantel’s wireless home broadband users from 5% to 41% over the past three years, bringing growth in home broadband revenue for three consecutive years. As the number of Omantel’s individual and home users is rising, the 5G traffic ratio has reached 65%. In addition, Omantel has deployed a second band for 5G, which will deliver an even better 5G FWA user experience.
Hatt believes that the GSMA Open Gateway Initiative will help operators open up 5G capabilities to a wider range of industry participants, thereby further unleashing 5G’s potential and accelerating the monetization of 5G.