If you only focus on speed when developing 5G, your vision is a bit narrow

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Nowadays, when it comes to 5G, I believe everyone is familiar with it.

When you click on this article now, you may be using 5G data and a 5G mobile phone.

Although it has entered the homes of ordinary people, the reputation of 5G has not been as good as expected. After all, the Internet access scenarios it can support are not much different from 4G. As for the Internet speed, it doesn't feel much faster?

But just recently, a story from Guizhou suddenly made me feel that this idea might be somewhat "superficial".

Because in those corners isolated by the mountains, there are mountain teachers who want to see their daughters every day, and there are young children who want to experience the world.

For them, is the Internet fast enough? This idea is a bit ahead of its time.

In this unnoticed world, just a 5G connection , just dialing a number so that two people can see each other, is enough to bring about a huge change in the lives of a mother and a group of children.

Connecting the invisible corners

Zuoge Village is a place where you won’t find much information even if you search online.

It is located in Qinglong County, Guizhou Province, which is commonly known as a "mountainous area".

Like almost all remote areas, educational resources in Zuoge Village are very limited. Zuoge Primary School has only three grades, three classes, 50 students, and only four teachers .

Cen Chun is one of these four people, and she has been working here for 9 years.

Cen Chun has never regretted staying here to teach. She said that she is willing to stay in the mountains, but she hopes that the children can have a chance to see the outside world. Her own children are not around and live in the county town.

This distance may not sound far to you, but when you put the scene in Guizhou, in Zuoge Village, things become different.

On the one hand, Guizhou's special topography means that even places that are very close on the map may actually be much farther away than imagined. On the other hand, many of Cen Chun's students are left-behind children. In the video we saw, in addition to teaching, she often visits students' homes.

As a result, Cen Chun's frequency of seeing her child was sometimes reduced to once a month. Due to local conditions, she and her daughter only communicated by phone on a daily basis.

For her, this way of only being able to hear each other's voices but not being able to meet each other made her feel more complicated:

The little girl called very frequently, and every time she would say "I miss you"

What's more, every mother wants to witness every detail of her child's growth.

The change began to happen after an application called 5G New Call became popular among the public.

This application is easy to understand. It upgrades the original voice call to a video call.

You can just dial the mobile phone number, which will not take up data flow , and you don’t need to download APP or add friends to experience ultra-high-definition video calls.

The cost is also very friendly, it is charged according to the length of the call. Take China Mobile as an example, the original account package voice time has been automatically upgraded since May last year and can be directly used for new 5G calls. If you have established a family network with your family, the call is basically free .

In this way, Cen Chun's chances of meeting her daughter increased immediately, and she did not need to change her mobile phone or account plan.

At the same time, Teacher Cen’s students are also affected by 5G.

With the help of 5G, Zuoge Primary School is able to connect to educational resources in first-tier cities online. Through smart classrooms, children in Zuoge Village no longer have to be blinded by the mountains.

It is reported that China Mobile's Global Communication Blue Dream Charity Project has donated broadband, smart devices, cloud video synchronous classrooms and other information-based educational materials to more than 100 schools in remote areas across the country.

All this is due, on the one hand, to the rapid coverage of 5G signals in the mountains of Guizhou, and on the other hand, to the development of 5G technology itself.

The latest data shows that the total number of 5G base stations in China has reached 2.384 million , accounting for 21.9% of the total number of mobile base stations. Among them, the number of 5G base stations built by China Mobile has exceeded 1.285 million .

In terms of technology, taking 5G new calls as an example, it is based on the existing IMS audio and video call framework, and introduces VoNR+ network capabilities to support a visual and fully interactive service experience.

Among them, the full name of VoNR is Voice over New Radio. VoNR refers to the end-to-end voice service carried by 5G NR, 5G Core and IMS.

To some extent, it would be more accurate to call VoNR Vo5G (Voice over 5GS).

The advantages of VoNR are that call establishment time is shorter and it supports concurrent 5G voice and 5G data, which means you can make a call while surfing the 5G Internet.

In addition to providing basic video call functions, 5G new calls can also open up more application scenarios, such as intelligent translation, intelligent customer service, multi-screen calls, remote assistance , etc.

In addition to network speed, what else can 5G satisfy?

The changes that 5G has brought to Zuoge Primary School are a reflection of the technology entering into hidden corners.

Since 5G began to be commercially available, the coverage of 5G base stations has been expanding from towns to more remote areas. Now, even in deserts and Gobi deserts, where few people go, 5G networks can be connected.

Dong Shuchang, a 23-year-old astronomy enthusiast, feels deeply about this .

Because he wants to capture the vast starry sky and rare wonders, he often needs to stay in the wild for observation.

But a few years ago, due to the incomplete coverage of 5G in the early stage of commercial use, he often encountered the situation that the weather forecast and stargazing software could not connect to the Internet. This is very important for shooting, because if this information cannot be obtained in time, he will miss many wonderful moments.

In addition, in order to save the photos he took, he used to need to carry a lot of hard drives with him, and the weight was very heavy when he went out to shoot.

Later, as the coverage of 5G signals gradually expanded, Dong Shuchang's "star chasing" process became much smoother.

He can directly view cloud maps and other software through the 5G network, observe data changes in real time, and more accurately find wonders that are about to erupt.

Through the unlimited speed China Mobile cloud disk, he can also upload nearly a thousand photos he has taken to the cloud quickly and stably.

Apart from these extreme scenarios that only a few people can experience, 5G is also widely used by the general public in their daily lives.

As mentioned above, 5G ultra-high-definition video calls can also be used to view houses remotely online.

As well as China Mobile Cloud Disk, there is no speed limit for uploading/downloading, it is as fast as 5G. You can also work efficiently while on a business trip.

Or based on the 5G network, you can use home cameras to monitor the situation at home in real time, and it will be easier to meet your parents in your hometown~

Today, the construction of 5G base stations in China is still advancing rapidly. Data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology show that the density of 5G base stations in China has reached 15.7 per 10,000 people (the number of 5G base stations per 10,000 people), and the 5G user utilization rate is 30.3% .

It is undeniable that many people may find the 5G experience bland, especially when compared with the large-scale deployment of 4G.

This is partly because the infrastructure needs to be further upgraded. Of course, it does not rule out the possibility that our current use of 5G to access the Internet is almost the same as when using 4G, so many advantages of 5G will be difficult to show.

However, in more marginal scenarios, such as deep mountains and deserts, the advantages of 5G will become obvious.

This also returns to the essential definition of cutting-edge technology - the upper limit that can be reached is higher and the lower limit is lower. In other words, the technology itself is more powerful, but the requirements for scenarios are lower.

In addition, recently, driven by ChatGPT, the view that "the popularization of AI services requires 5G connections" has aroused widespread heated discussion. The stock prices of operators have also been rising, and China Mobile's market value is approaching that of Moutai, which has attracted a lot of attention.

This inevitably makes us start to look forward to whether 5G, which has always been closely related to AI, cloud computing, and the Internet of Things, will also take this opportunity to open up a new pattern and integrate more deeply into our lives?

What do you think?