Governments should subsidise telecoms infrastructure deployments and work harder to make spectrum available, the CEO of Huawei has said as the vendor revealed it had shipped its 10,000th 5G base station.
Speaking at the vendor’s Global Mobile Broadband Forum in London, Ken Hu backed recent calls from operators for help with getting Europe ready for 5G.
Hu said governments need to work harder at harmonising and release contiguous bands of 5G ready spectrum and charge less than they did for LTE. He added: “In the meantime, in addition to C-band, all bands can and will eventually be used for 5G, including 2.3 GHz and 2.6 GHz bands.”
Ironically for a vendor selling infrastructure and services, Hu sympathised with the costs operators face in deploying new networks. He said: “As for sites, deploying networks is expensive business. We encourage governments to make more public resources available for site deployment.
“Shared utility infrastructure, such as rooftops and light poles, can help carriers cut costs and time, and can even open up new revenue streams for public utilities.”
In spite of the costs involved, Huawei has used the event to announce it has crossed the 10,000 mark for 5G base station shipments.
Elsewhere, Hu was keen to talk up 5G’s potential, describing it as ushering in a “technology revolution”. He added: “From all angles, 5G is ready. It’s ready to use, it’s affordable, and most importantly, demand is real.”
The CEO reiterated the now commonly cited benefits of 5G, from limitless connectivity and connected devices by default, to worldwide cloudification and fully reinvented devices.