Huawei does 5G Gangnam style

Huawei teamed up with Korean operator LG U+ to demonstrate some novel 5G applications on the streets of Seoul.

The two set up what they claim is ‘the world’s first large-scale 5G network test in a pre-commercial environment’ in the Gangnam district, which is known for its high-rise buildings as well as the cool kids alluded to in the famous pop song. It featured base stations using the 3.5 GHz and the 28 GHz spectrum bands.

This demo was designed to coincide with the fourth global 5G event, which otherwise yielded suspiciously little news. It was symptomatic of the growing desperation from the telecoms industry to demonstrate 5G infrastructure is worth spending money on because of all the great utopian stuff it will enable.

Among those, apparently, are the ability to stream 4K IPTV video into a moving bus and to control and stream data from a VR drone. How we have coped without such basic essentials to date is a mystery, but the good news is those dark days will soon be behind us.

“The world’s first large-scale joint 5G pre-commercial test indicated a significant breakthrough in 5G,” said Kim Dae Hee, VP of LG U+ 5G Strategy Unit. “We believe that Huawei is set to help LG U+ implement the world’s first Commercial 5G network over 3.5 GHz.”

“In the Gangnam District of Korea, we have successfully validated the 5G pre-commercial network and released the world’s first 3.5 GHz CPE,” Zhou Yuefeng, Huawei Wireless Product Line CMO. “This demonstrates that Huawei will maintain its capability to provide competitive E2E 5G network products in 2018. LG U+ and Huawei will continue to conduct further research into 5G technologies and build a robust E2E industry ecosystem to achieve business success in the upcoming 5G era.”

Incidentally Gangnam Style recently became only the third YouTube video to hit three billion views, having been the first to cross the one billion mark. It is only third on the list of all time YouTube views, however, behind Despacito and See You Again – both also music videos. In fact music videos dominate the top 100 most-viewed YouTube vids, accounting for 95 of them.