China's Huawei, European partners join forces as EU 5G research levels up

GENEVA - The world's leading telecommunication solution provider Chinese company Huawei and its European partners reached a major milestone on the road towards 5G with the launch of the first phase projects of the European 5G Public Private Partnership (5G-PPP) at the beginning of this month, announced the Chinese company Tuesday in a press release.

According to the press release, Huawei is a key contributor to the 5G-PPP initiative and will lead work packages in four of the five projects of the initiative.

"5G will create vast business opportunities while enhancing quality of life on a number of levels. Building fruitful alliances will be key to bringing us closer to transforming our vision of 5G into a global standard," said Tong Wen, Huawei Wireless CTO.

Tong affirmed that Europe has huge potential for boosting 5G development by federating efforts, and the 5G-PPP is a good illustration of this approach.

The 5G-PPP aims at strengthening European 5G research and global cooperation in this field with a view to achieving communications infrastructure capable of coping with future wireless demand by 2020.

This involves providing 1,000 times higher wireless area capacity, saving up to 90 percent of energy per service provided, and creating a secure, reliable and dependable internet with "zero perceived" downtime.

Tong said Huawei is investing a tremendous research effort into this key enabling technology, affirming the collaboration with European industry and research partners is at the very heart of this commitment.

Huawei has been at the forefront of this collaborative effort since the very beginning, as Board Member of the 5G Infrastructure Association, and is now contributing with its expertise and global resources to some of the most future-oriented projects being implemented under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program.

In addition to these new projects, Huawei is forging ahead with its other European 5G initiatives. It is conducting a joint 5G research program with the University of Surrey's 5G Innovation Centre in the UK, and plans a testbed there by 2018.