Industry applications are so attractive, so why can’t we get a taste of 5G networks?

Taking stock of the sources of growth in operators' government and enterprise businesses, it is found that 5G private networks related to 5G industry applications have not achieved a revenue breakthrough. In China Mobile's 2021 financial report, total revenue hit a 10-year high of more than 800 billion yuan, and 5G private networks related to 5G industry applications have not yet achieved a revenue breakthrough. The 5G private network business seems to be in a rather embarrassing situation. In the market driven by the 5G industry application pilot, users are more likely to choose operators' cloud services and dedicated line services, forming a situation of "5G leads the way, and cloud is the head of the family."

Why does this happen? The biggest reason is that the industry maturity of 5G private networks is not enough, and 5G connection solutions are not irreplaceable technologies for government and enterprise users. At the same time, in the digital transformation of enterprises, the cloud-network collaboration solutions provided by operators are more in line with the cross-regional, cross-domain, flexible and fast business needs of enterprises, so cloud services and private line services are rigid demands.

The "5G Application 'Set Sail' Action Plan" released in July 2021 hopes to break through the industry application of 5G, and selected 15 fields as breakthroughs. These fields include industrial Internet, Internet of Vehicles, smart logistics, smart ports, smart mining, smart electricity, smart oil and gas, smart agriculture and smart water conservancy.

However, breakthroughs in each vertical field cannot be achieved overnight, and the challenges faced by each industry are also different. For example, in coal mines, whether using 5G technology to achieve remote mining or using 5G to achieve safety monitoring of underground production, it is imagined that good technology will help the digital upgrade of the industry. However, when it was implemented, it was found that the challenges faced by 5G underground exist in every link of use. For example, the price of 5G modules has been slow to fall, and the cost of large-scale deployment has exceeded expectations. For example, the underground situation is complicated, with high temperature, high humidity, and high dust. In addition, different mines are very different. The equipment must meet the requirements of safety, explosion-proof, anti-sharp, high temperature resistance, and humidity resistance. Every problem is a "stumbling block" for 5G "going to the mine".

If 5G wants to develop from a network that originally served mass consumers and played a supporting role in vertical industries to the main network technology in the industrial Internet, Internet of Vehicles, and various smart applications, it needs to overcome these difficulties and make up for the shortcomings.

This is bound to be a long process. In this process, first, it is necessary to promote the further maturity of 5G technology in industry applications. Liu Guiqing, deputy general manager of China Telecom, recently analyzed the current status of 5G industry applications. He believes that the current 5G industry application innovation and exploration has entered the deep water zone and has begun to extend from the auxiliary production link to the core production link. The core production link of the industry involves machine motion control, machine collaboration, machine vision AI detection and other applications, which have extremely high requirements for latency, reliability, and uplink bandwidth.

The second is to form a 5G solution with stronger comprehensive capabilities. 5G LAN is the basic technology for 5G networks to extend to core production links. The research on this technology is becoming more and more in-depth. The future goal is to seamlessly integrate with the original network architecture of the enterprise. 5G LAN can also bring support for mobile devices to the enterprise network, reducing the transformation cost of the enterprise. The improvement of 5G's capabilities for vertical industry applications is a dynamic process. According to the 5G evolution route, 5G will break through from the initial three capabilities of low latency, large connection, and high speed to six capabilities. The three newly added capabilities are real-time bandwidth interaction, uplink ultra-wideband, and communication perception fusion.

The third is to promote the reduction of 5G costs. RedCap is defined in the newly frozen R16 of 5G, and a customizable streamlined design is made for IoT applications in the industry market. The 5G network can be streamlined according to the needs of different enterprises, significantly reducing costs.

Although the information and communication industry is not new to the enterprise market, it is the first time that the network has been rooted in the core production links of industries and enterprises. The industry application of 5G is pioneering and groundbreaking. The greater the difficulties we face today, the greater the harvest will be in the future. This is a market that requires long-term patience to reap long-term rewards.