The third anniversary of 5G license issuance: "Three-generation life" has brought prosperity

On June 6, 2022, my country's 5G commercial license issuance ushered in the third anniversary. The number "three" has been endowed with important significance and rich connotations since ancient times. Sima Qian, the historian, said in "Records of the Grand Historian: Book of Laws" that "numbers begin with one, end with ten, and are completed with three"; Laozi's "Tao Te Ching" further interprets the creation of the universe with "Tao begets one, one begets two, two begets three, and three begets all things", and regards "three" as the foundation and beginning of the evolution of all things.

Over the past three years, my country's 5G industry has achieved remarkable achievements, and has continued to lead the world in terms of network scale, number of users, industrial ecology, application innovation and other dimensions, and has delivered on its initial design promise with a gigabit cross-generation experience. More importantly, 5G's role in improving people's lives, promoting industry transformation, helping to fight poverty, and supporting epidemic prevention and control has begun to emerge, and has been widely perceived and recognized by all sectors of society.

However, the value released by 5G so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Especially in thousands of industries, 5G is in a critical stage of accelerating from "taking root" to "bearing fruit". With the advancement of large-scale applications, more new scenarios will emerge and more new businesses will be enabled in the future development of 5G.

“When the tide is high, the two banks are wide; when the wind is right, the sails are hoisted.” The more prosperous picture of the 5G industry and the intelligent world it points to is waiting for us to write together.

5G: A powerful engine for the development of the digital economy

In recent years, the digital economy has flourished and has become the main economic form after the agricultural economy and the industrial economy, and is driving profound changes in production methods, lifestyles, and governance methods. A report released by the World Bank in 2020 stated that the development of the digital economy will have a fundamental impact on the structure and process of the economic system. Research by the Oxford Economics Institute shows that the long-term returns of digital technology are 6.7 times that of non-digital technology.

The "new infrastructure" represented by 5G is an important path for my country to promote the development of the overall digital industry. Its significance lies in the amplified driving effect - first, it will drive the competitiveness of the overall digital industry, and secondly, it will promote the digitalization and intelligent upgrading of all industries, thereby achieving structural adjustments to the current economy, improving quality, enhancing stamina, and ultimately driving the growth of the digital economy in the entire society.

The country's 14th Five-Year Plan has set the tone for the development of China's digital economy. The digital economy will set off a new round of development wave. During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the digital economy is expected to maintain an average annual growth rate of about 9%, and its scale will exceed 60 trillion yuan by 2025.

In the deep integration of digital technology and the real economy, the importance of 5G is unquestionable. Data is a key production factor in the digital economy era. 5G builds a credible, reliable, and committed mobile network to achieve efficient collaboration of cloud/edge/end data, providing a highway for the flow of massive data. At the same time, as a digital enabling foundation, it can organically integrate digital technologies such as big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, thereby empowering thousands of industries and stimulating more new industries, new formats, and new models.

In fact, 5G has become a strong engine driving the development of the digital economy. The "Research on China's 5G Development and Economic and Social Impact (2021)" released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that in 2021, my country's 5G directly drove a total economic output of 1.3 trillion yuan and indirectly drove a total output of about 3.38 trillion yuan, both of which increased by more than 30% over 2020. Earlier estimates show that in 2025, the market size of my country's 5G industry chain will reach 3.3 trillion yuan, the scale of the 5G ecosystem and 5G-enabled industries will reach 6.3 trillion yuan, and will create more than 3 million jobs.

Value presentation: Behind the beautiful numbers

Thanks to the guidance of national policies and the joint efforts of the industry, my country has built and opened a total of 1.56 million 5G base stations, covering all prefecture-level cities and all county towns, and 87% of townships and towns, and deployed more than 5,325 5G industry virtual private networks; a total of 761 5G terminals have obtained network access licenses, including 548 mobile phone terminals, and the number of 5G mobile phone users has exceeded 400 million; the 5G diversion ratio of the three major operators has reached more than 20%, and the 5G diversion ratio in key areas such as Guangdong, Zhejiang, Shenzhen, Shanghai, and Beijing has reached more than 30%; the number of 5G standard essential patents declared by Chinese companies remains the world's leading... The rapid development of the 5G industry has become a beautiful landscape under the century-old changes and the century-old epidemic.

What is even more gratifying is that behind these figures are real scenarios and use cases that we can perceive. For example, during the epidemic, various 5G+ applications greatly helped epidemic prevention and control and post-epidemic resumption of work and production, and strongly supported the stable operation of the social economy.

In the toC field, typical mobile applications of new media based on 5G technology can be seen everywhere. The 5G+ ultra-high-definition live broadcast and 5G+AR/VR applications at the Beijing Winter Olympics brought an immersive viewing experience to off-site spectators; many poor villages have been transformed into "live broadcast towns" and "Taobao villages" due to 5G signal coverage, striding forward on the road to poverty alleviation and prosperity; the extension of 5G to remote areas has brought high-quality education and medical resources through online classes, telemedicine, and other means, realizing inclusive social development.

In the toB field, the enabling effect of 5G has effectively accelerated the digital transformation of thousands of industries. The latest data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that 5G has formed multiple typical application scenarios with commercial value, covering 40 of the 97 major categories of the national economy. As a representative reference, the number of entries in the 2021 "Blooming Cup" 5G Application Innovation Competition has increased from 330 in 2018 to 12,000, covering more than 10 fields such as industrial Internet, medical and health services, intelligent transportation, smart finance, sports and entertainment, etc., of which 33% have been commercialized and 15% can be replicated on a large scale; in the leading application industries such as mining, steel, electricity and ports, large-scale promotion has also been achieved.

For example, in the mining industry, 5G goes deep underground, realizing automatic underground inspection and remote control of coal mining machines, tunneling machines, and transport rail cars, effectively reducing the number of workers going down the mine; in the steel industry, 5G's large bandwidth and low latency characteristics have realized the unmanned and remote automatic control of overhead cranes, improving the working environment and greatly improving production efficiency; in the port industry, the remote control of gantry cranes in 5G smart ports has reduced the number of people working at high altitudes, improved the working environment, and achieved an improvement in comprehensive efficiency through one person and multiple machines; in the manufacturing industry, the collaboration of 5G+AI has changed the quality inspection model of the product line, improving the efficiency of quality inspection while also achieving a 100% interception rate for bad parts. It can be seen that the integration of 5G and the real economy has not only brought significant commercial value, but also reflected the social significance of "people-oriented".

A new round of industrial upgrading is about to emerge

5G is increasingly closely connected with society, economy, and people's livelihood. With the accelerated release of market demand, the increasing number of application scenarios, and the rising expectations of the Chinese people, its future development path is still long and arduous, especially in matching industry needs. There are still certain breakpoints and pain points, and a new round of industrial upgrading is imminent.

In this regard, a series of industrial policies such as the "5G Application "Set Sail" Action Plan (2021-2023)" and the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Information and Communication Industry" have pointed out the direction for us, emphasizing the need to work hard to deepen and broaden coverage, deepen integrated applications, and increase industrial collaboration, so as to achieve the large-scale replication and promotion of 5G from leading industries to thousands of industries.

The three major operators are also further deepening their layout in 5G-enabled industries. In addition to focusing on key industries to create benchmark applications and achieve scale expansion, they are also taking active actions in building an application ecosystem, creating an open platform, incubating innovative products, and even providing investment and financing.

At the same time, judging from the development law of the mobile communications industry, which is one generation every ten years, 5G technology itself will continue to evolve. In April 2021, 3GPP named the evolution of 5G as 5G-Advanced and decided to start standardization from Rel-18. In December 2021, the first batch of 28 projects of 3GPP Rel-18 were successfully approved, marking that the research and standardization of 5G-Advanced technology has entered the practical stage, opening a new chapter in the exploration and development of 5G.

5G-Advanced commercial deployment is expected to take place between 2024 and 2025. It not only has a 10-fold improvement in the original capabilities such as uplink and downlink experience rate, latency and connection density, but also brings new capabilities such as broadband real-time interaction, interawareness integration, and high-precision positioning to the 5G-enabled industry. Recently, the three major operators have also held press conferences to release the latest results of their joint innovation with industry partners.

"Three" represents the key node from conception to explosion in the process of "Tao" giving birth to all things. The same is true for 5G, which has been commercially available for three years. As 5G leaps to a higher level, wider breadth, and deeper depth, this fertile soil will eventually grow into a riot of flowers and bloom with the power to change the world.