Huawei working with Ericsson and Nokia to promote fixed 5G networks

Rival equipment vendors Ericsson, Nokia and Huawei are working together with others in an alliance to promote the use of 4G and 5G as an alternative to fibre.

They are all part of a new group set up by the Global Mobile Suppliers Association (GSA) to promote fixed wireless access (FWA), increasingly seen as an alternative way of delivering broadband in place of full fibre.

GSA president Joe Barrett said the 4G-5G FWA Forum has “27 of the world’s biggest and most innovative vendors from across the FWA ecosystem joining as founding partners and members”.

This “is tangible evidence of the early growth opportunity for 5G that fixed wireless access offers”, Barrett added.

The new group is chaired by a Huawei executive Julien Grivolas and its deputy is John Yazlle of Ericsson.

“The FWA market is seeing rapid growth with over 484 operators investing in FWA based on LTE or 5G — an opportunity that chipset, module, and terminal vendors right across the world are responding to,” said Grivolas.

“The challenge for the industry in such a rapidly evolving market is to learn from each other, promote successful experiences and identify directions in technical development. By complementing the existing activities of our members, the GSA 4G-5G FWA Forum is committed to giving the fixed wireless ecosystem a voice that operators around the world will hear.”

Members include ASRMicro, Casa Systems, Ericsson, Huawei, Nokia, Qualcomm, Sequans and Zhongmi Communications.

The organisation’s first act will be to produce a catalogue of FWA products. The GSA said that it has identified over 1500 LTE FWA devices in its database, of which 822 were added so far this year.