Awards highlight Huawei's high profile at Mobile World Congress

BARCELONA - The Global Mobile Awards presented on Tuesday night at the Mobile World Congress (MWC), which is open in Barcelona until Thursday, highlighted the importance Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei has in the sector.

Huawei won no fewer than eight of the 'Glomo' (Global World Mobile) Awards, considered the Oscars of the mobile communications industry.

The company's 5G-ready Ultra-Wide Band (UWB) Radio Family won the award for Best Mobile Infrastructure; the 5G-ready Cloud AIR Solution Sprint was a joint winner of the Best Technology Breakthrough award and was also the CTO's choice for Outstanding Mobile Technology. The company's 5G Core Solution was considered the best network software breakthrough.

Further Glomo was awarded for Huawei's NB-IoT Smart City Solution in the Smart City Innovation category, while the Rural Star Connectivity Solution scooped the award for Best Innovation in Emerging Markets.

The company's commitment to the environment was also recognized with the Green Mobile Award for its Zero Footprint Tube Star Solution. The company also claimed the prestigious Outstanding Contribution to the Mobile Industry prize.

GSMA chairman Sunil Bharti Mittal praised Huawei for its "commitment" to the mobile industry, saying its "contribution to global standards" and "focus on innovation" would be reflected in the future.

At the MWC, Huawei has three separate stands, and made a series of major announcements which highlighted the company's position on the cutting edge of the mobile industry.

Key to the future of the mobile communications sector is the development and rollout of 5G networks, which will allow connection speeds up to 100 times faster than at present and a far greater capacity for data transmission.

As a company that has been investing in 5G since 2009, Huawei is at the forefront of progress in this field. On Tuesday, it announced memorandums of understanding (MoU) regarding 5G networks with 45 operators in Asia, Europe and North America.

Meanwhile, they are already carrying out pre-commercial trials with 30 companies in a view to hit the market as soon as the end of 2018, according to Huawei Rotating CEO Ken Hu.

The company's first 5G smartphone will be launched in the first three months of 2019, he added.

The 5G rollout will open the door for a far greater volume of data transfer, and this will mean a huge step forward in the technology-permitting driverless vehicles.

The MWC saw Huawei present its proposal in this field with the "RoadReader", which uses the camera in a Huawei Mate 10 smartphone to scan the road ahead, identify objects, and transmit this information to the vehicle's automatic systems by Wi-Fi.

Huawei said the car can "distinguish between 1,000 different objects, including cats, dogs, footballs and bicycles" thanks to the smartphone's memory.

The possibilities 5G will open to the media were also on the Huawei MWC agenda with a demonstration of cloud-based high-end media solutions made with Sony Professional and T-Systems.

According to Ren Zhipeng, the president of Huawei Western Europe's Cloud Business Unit, this will help create "a new level of cloud based media solutions to serve customers all over the world", allowing for multi-platform production for TV, web, mobile devices and social media.