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4.5G Meets the Internet of Things at Disney

July 23, 2015

By Ernest Worthman —

July 23, 2015 — Considering 5G is only five years away from implementation, should there be a 4.5G? Huawei thinks so. It just announced a string of 4.5G and 5G-related achievements, including one in which it will deploy new services based on 4.5G at the Shanghai Disney Resort for China Unicom Shanghai.

That is an interesting vector. First of all, what is 4.5G? Can anybody deploy it as a standard? Is it really worth the investment as a stopgap platform until 5G? Will it be portable to 5G? Will it be part of the 2G…5G infrastructure, eventually? Traditionally, ½-G technologies are just a marketing play to get some money out of incremental advances, and this seems to be the case with 4.5G.

Huawei has said that it has made a series of significant breakthroughs in air interface solutions applicable to small cells — including 256QAM modulation, carrier aggregation, Licensed-Assisted Access (LAA), and candidate technologies for 5G — enabling networks to deliver a data rate at the xGbs level.

OK, let’s see if it is worth the effort. Huawei is going to bed with the Disney resort in deploying what they call the “cellular Internet of Things services,” including smart parking and smart people flow management. Service applications, including 2K/4K video services, virtual reality and LTE-Vehicle, will be introduced within the next three years.

OK, let’s see if it is worth the effort. Huawei is going to bed with the Disney resort in deploying what they call the “cellular Internet of Things services,” including smart parking and smart people flow management. Service applications, including 2K/4K video services, virtual reality and LTE-Vehicle, will be introduced within the next three years.

Well, here we have two emerging technologies trying to come together. It will be interesting to see if this gains traction or is just a way for Huawei to try to squeeze a bit more revenue out of hype and a few incremental gains in technology. Is it worth it with 5G only five years away or are we being taken for a Disney ride?

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