LIVE FROM GSMA MOBILE 360 SERIES – MENA, DUBAI: Mohamed Madkour, VP global wireless networks marketing and solutions at Huawei (pictured), insisted every region, country and business must start preparing strategies for 5G, as all investments in LTE now contribute to developing the next-generation mobile technology.

In a keynote, Madkour said every country in the world was now talking about 5G, even if LTE adoption remained low and operators had not achieved a strong return on recent investment, because the future prospects of the technology are so strong.

“During the course of the past two or three months, I have been to many different countries and you will be surprised to know that in Vietnam, Bangladesh, Latin America, South Africa, Thailand, you name it, these countries are talking about 5G and we encourage it.”

“The key message is that, no matter where you are, you must start to somehow think about 5G in all aspects of your current strategy, whether that is in the business, in talent, in HR or the wider organisation.”

All roads lead to 5G
Madkour explained every investment currently made in LTE was, in fact, a future 5G investment, which was key to eventual commercialisation.

“Every investment you make in ground work and every investment you do as part of your strategic moves is a 5G investment. LTE evolution allows you to economise network supply and it allows companies to energise demand to get you away from just B2C. Through this investment, you will address fixed wireless access segment, IoT, video, and eventually you can add a 5G New Radio layer.”

He added the second area of 5G focus should be on the wider ecosystem, as well as the cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) piece: “From day one you need to work on enlarging an understanding of different ecosystems, and the third is the cloud and AI. You cannot separate 5G from cloud and AI. 5G without those does not make sense.”

Madkour rounded off by hailing the 5G Ecosystem Alliance, backed by Huawei, which has now more than 50 members. He said a key focus of the group was the shorten RoI when it comes to 5G investment, which is currently a “major bottleneck”.