The Balong 5G01 commercial chipset is supposedly the first to support the new 3GPP standard for 5G.
Huawei may not have announced a phone at MWC 2018, but it didn’t come to the show empty-handed. The company announced the new MateBook X Pro, the MediaPad M5 and M5 Pro tablets, and yes, its first ever 5G chip.
The latter announcement comes as both Qualcomm and Intel are pushing 5G in a big way, and Huawei says that its Balong 5G01 commercial chipset is the first to support the new 3GPP standard for 5G networks.
This is the first official specification for 5G, or rather the 5G NR standard, that 3GPP (the organization responsible for cellular standards) signed off on, and it provides a goal for companies to work toward.
Huawei says the Balong 5G01 has a peak data rate of up to 2.3Gbps and supports both sub-6GHz and millimetre wave frequencies.
The Chinese company is best known for its slickly-designed smartphones, but it also manufactures telecommunications and networking equipment, so its investment in this area comes as no surprise.
CEO Richard Yu says Huawei invested around US$600 million in 5G network technology, which will find its way into everything from mobile phones to smart homes and connected cars. In fact, Huawei claims it’s the first to offer an end-to-end 5G solution from the network down to the device and chipset level.
The company is looking to launch a 5G smartphone with the 5G smartphone chipset later this year, according to Yu, and it has no intention of licensing the Balong 5G01 chipset to rival device makers.
5G is the next generation of cellular networks that we’re all waiting for, and it’s supposed to leave 4G in the dust just like the latter did with 3G. Still, even with 5G-ready devices supposed to appear in 2019, it’ll probably be a couple of years before we see widespread adoption.
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