Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems giant ZTE is progressing at pace with its advancement of 5G technology in Africa, with South Africa as the company's launch pad for rollout on the continent.
Speaking at Africacom 2016 in Cape Town this week, ZTE senior vice-president for the Middle East and Africa, Huang Dabin said the organisation will be conducting test runs of aspects of 5G using the 4G network over the next three years in advance of full rollout of the technology in 2020.
Referred to as Pre5G, the technology will utilise the new, considerably faster and more capable technology of 5G on the existing network, enabling communication service providers to utilise a 5G-like user experience on existing 4G handsets.
ZTE's rapid introduction of 5G will make use of the company's Pre5G Massive MIMO base station, an industry-leading commercial product which uses 5G-ready technologies to provide commercial 4G users with 5G-like access experience. No overhauling of 4G hardware is required, allowing the improved performance of 5G capability to be experienced on existing 4G handsets.
The Pre5G Massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) base station concept, which enables faster speed single-carrier transmission capacity and between four and six time better spectral efficiency than traditional base stations, won double honours at the World Mobile Capital 2016 in Barcelona for Best Wireless Technology Breakthrough, and Best CTO's Choice. The accolades were awarded for ZTE having overcome the challenge of doing multi-user and multi-stream spatial multiplexing in a scattered signal environment, clearing the major hurdle in the development of Massive MIMO technology.
Dabin confirmed the company intends to have its 5G rollout complete in South Africa by 2020, in time for the Commonwealth Games in Durban.
Another innovation presented at the conference was ZTE's ElasticNet 3.0 concept, a next-generation network solution augmented by software define networking (SDN) and network functioning virtualisation (NFV) technology.
The ElasticNet model integrates SDN, NFV and cloud computing technology, upgrading a network from a closed virtual design to a more open horizontal one. The technology provides organisations with a triple-layered network solution that is split into orchestration and management, cloud service, and cloud bearer layers. Beside these sit a number of data centres which form the architecture of the telecoms network.
The technology has the capability to help communication service providers make a rapid evolution towards an open, simple and agile future network.
"The evolution of SDN/NFV is reshaping the ICT industry. Cloud will be the core component of the future infrastructure of ElasticNet. Its triple-layer design will enable network re-architecture with cloud-network convergence on the bottom layer, service re-architecture featuring virtualisation and openness at the service control layer, and operation re-architecture for smart-operation in the upper layer," said Dabin.
"The design will enhance cooperation amongst players within the industry. It introduces a whole new philosophy to telecommunications."
The third innovation brought to Africacom 2016 by ZTE was Big Video. First proposed by the organisation at the 2016 Mobile World Congress Barcelona, Big Video is the convergence of rapid growth in four key areas: content, networks, data and the mobile ecosystem.
Dabin identified video service as the next value keystone for global telecoms operators in the future.
"Artificial intelligence (AI), intelligent video analysis and augmented reality versus virtual reality (AR/VR) are among the industry's hot topics. Cloud-based video is fast-growing, and the maturity of 4K and 8K high-definition video is enabling increasingly effective communication. With video content estimated to achieve more than 95% of total Internet traffic by 2020, video is logically the next strategic value segment for communication service providers to seize. The Big Video ecosystem will help ZTE customers provide the best possible quality video to end users," explains Dabin.
ZTE's substantial presence at Africacom 2016 was reflective of the organisation's investment in telecoms across the continent. As an international provider of telecommunications, enterprise and consumer technology solutions for the mobile Internet, and with an active presence in 40 African countries, the company enables communications services for more than 300 million users across Africa. For ZTE the continent accounts for about US$1 billion, approximately 10% of the organisation's global revenue.
Dabin explained the organisation has three important cornerstones to its African business model. Firstly, it provides committed service to telecoms operators - in South Africa these are Vodacom, MTN and Cell C.
Secondly, it focuses on enterprise and government business. This includes the rollout of more than 2 000km of fibre for a backbone optical transmission network in major cities across the country as part of the government's National Broadband Network of SA.
The third pillar is the handset market. ZTE is making steady inroads at growing its brand's footprint and increasing market share in the sector, targeting the lower end consumer with the provision of devices at the lower price point.
"We believe there is enormous potential in Africa, and investing in the continent is an important part of our business strategy. The continent is behind the rest of the world in ICT infrastructure and development. The 4G technology in Europe, the US and China has been established for about three years already, and the window for development there is almost closed. However, in South Africa 4G is still in its infancy, so the next two or three years is very important for us - we plan to maximise the 4G opportunity in this country and in the rest of Africa," said Dabin.
Dabin added that investing in Africa is not easy and comes with its own unique set of challenges. The economic environment is unpredictable. Local currencies are weak compared with the US dollar, and many African countries have insufficient foreign currency for infrastructure development - always an issue for international investment.
Logistically, telecoms infrastructure needs to be put in place in every country on the continent, and because existing network systems are relatively unsophisticated, that infrastructure is not easy to share between countries. The market of every African country is small when compared with that of Europe, China or India, so the return on investment is small.
"But with every challenge comes opportunity, and ZTE has invested in Africa for the long term," added Dabin.
Fuelled by improved economic conditions, the past five or so years have seen Africa experience the fastest telecoms growth worldwide. In turn, telecoms has been an important driver of the continent's growth during that time. The mobile phone market has burgeoned, with Sub-Saharan Africa showing the highest growth rate of mobile subscriptions of any region on the globe.
Estimations are that the Sub-Saharan telecoms service market will be worth US$51 billion in 2021, up from US$41 billion in 2015. Smartphone penetration is predicted to reach around 80% of the region's population by 2022. Mobile handset data services are forecast to be the largest source of retail revenue growth in the region between 2015 and 2021, contributing in the region of US$8 billion.
Dabin said ZTE's recognition of the importance of ongoing research and development played a considerable role in the company's success.
"Investment in R&D around new technologies is the future. Of course it is difficult to continue to invest during tough economic times, but we believe strongly in the benefits of investment. The art is to manage those tough times carefully, and to minimise risk wherever possible."
Dabin identified information, innovation and risk control as three crucial aspects to business survival into the future.
"Innovation is particularly important to ZTE. The Internet of things (IOT) is a new opportunity and offers huge potential for the entire ICT industry. The technology will enable new ways to deliver efficient, innovative solutions to improve quality of life for millions of people, improve business processes, and unlock economic growth in Africa," he said.
The IOT forms a major part of ZTE's global ICT business plan over the next five years. The organisation announced its M-ICT 2.0 strategy in August, in which the M "encompasses multiple dimensions, capturing the characteristics of inter-connectedness, be that person to person, person to machine, or machine to machine."
The M-ICT 2.0 strategy is geared towards helping businesses seize opportunities in an economy defined by the emergence of the sharing economy and the increasing use of peer-to-peer networks, and dependence on the universal range of cloud computing platforms and services.
"ZTE identifies five trends that will play an important role in the ongoing global economic transformation. These are virtuality, openness, intelligence, cloudification and the Internet of things," said Dabin.
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