5G, which frequently appears on hot searches, has really "broken the circle" in 2021!

It has been two years since the 5G license was issued at the end of 2021. In the past two years, 5G has developed rapidly. In addition to 5G mobile phones that consumers have deeply experienced, 5G has also appeared more and more in parks and computer rooms in major financial, energy, medical and other industries. In order to empower thousands of industries, 5G development has been consistent, with millions of base stations, tens of thousands of industry applications, and 400 million 5G terminals... These impressive results are excellent answers to the initial construction plan of 5G.

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In response to the new requirements put forward in the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Information and Communication Industry", the depth and breadth of 5G construction will continue to expand. It is expected that by 2025, the 5G world we see will be beyond imagination.

The number of base stations exceeded one million and the number of terminal connections exceeded 400 million

Build roads first, then open them to traffic, and build ahead of time to promote use. In 2021, 5G network construction will closely follow industry and market needs, achieving deep coverage and on-demand coverage. As of October 2021, China has 1.159 million 5G base stations, 450 million 5G terminal connections, and Gigabit optical networks have the capacity to cover more than 200 million households, building the world's largest 5GSA network.

Most of the opportunities in the 5G government and enterprise market rely on the large-scale deployment of 5G standalone networking (5GSA). This allows industrial applications that require specific security and/or performance to take full advantage of 5G advantages, such as ultra-reliable, low-latency (URLLC), network slicing and edge computing technologies. The latest research by GSMA shows that China is currently the only country in the global market where all operators have deployed 5GSA networks. It is expected that in 2022, China will become a pioneer market around the further development of 5GSA, and operators will have the potential to provide powerful private networks and dedicated networks.

The construction of 5G networks will continue to advance rapidly. In the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Information and Communication Industry" released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in November, the main indicators for the development of the information and communication industry during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period were also formulated. In terms of 5G base stations, it is required to achieve 26 5G base stations per 10,000 people by 2025, which means that by 2025, the number of 5G base stations in China will reach more than 3.6 million. In the next four years, China will also build at least 2.445 million 5G base stations, and it is expected that 600,000 new 5G base stations will be added each year. The 5G network will gradually cover the whole country. According to the data from the GSMA think tank, by the end of 2022, China will achieve 640 million 5G connections, of which 5G will account for nearly 40% of the total number of mobile connections in the country.

Consumer 5G experience is getting better and better

Previous promotions on the toC side encountered problems with consumers not understanding and not accepting it. However, through the increase in the number of 5G package users, we can see that consumers are also voting for 5G with their own choices.

As of October, China Telecom had 168 million 5G package users, a net increase of 12.95 million in the month; China Mobile had 356 million 5G package customers, a net increase of 24.299 million from the previous month; China Unicom had 144 million 5G package users, with a net increase of 6.568 million 5G package users in the month. The three major operators have a total of more than 668 million 5G users.

Domestic 5G mobile phone shipments are gradually increasing. According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, from January to August 2021, 168 million 5G mobile phones were shipped in the Chinese market, a year-on-year increase of 79.7%, accounting for 74.1% of mobile phone shipments in the same period.

Although the government and enterprise market is often touted as the "blue ocean" of the 5G era, Chinese operators have not ignored the new growth in the consumer sector. The latest GSMA report pointed out that operators' efforts to migrate customers to 5G packages appear to be having a positive impact on finances. Driven by 5G penetration, China Unicom's mobile business ARPU (average revenue per user) increased by 8.5% year-on-year in the first half of 2021, while China Telecom and China Mobile both stated that 5G ARPU increased by 10% over 4G, bringing hope to the mobile industry.

As one of the important applications on the consumer side, 5G messaging has attracted great attention since its debut. Last year, the three major operators jointly released the "5G Message White Paper" to plan the commercial use of 5G messaging. More than a year later, China Unicom recently announced the launch of 5G messaging trial commercial use across the country and launched the "5G Message Experience Recruitment Campaign", providing free 5G messaging experience packages for corporate customers and individual users. Friendly experience users will enjoy a richer, more convenient, intelligent and secure new 5G messaging experience. Industry insiders believe that with the large-scale commercial use of 5G, the increase in the penetration rate of smart terminals, and the development of digital and payment technologies, 5G messaging will usher in huge market opportunities. By then, the scene power of trillions of text messages will be unstoppable, and RCS (convergent communication) is expected to become the main entrance to future smart terminal scene services.

Yangfan leads the continuous expansion of toB applications

Since the beginning of this year, 5G applications have blossomed everywhere, and industry expansion has been advancing by leaps and bounds. At present, there are more than 10,000 cases of 5G application innovation in the country, covering 22 important industries of the national economy. The application scenarios of vertical industries such as industrial manufacturing, mining, and ports have accelerated their scale implementation, and have expanded from the initial production auxiliary business to core businesses such as equipment control and quality control. This is the field where 5G application solutions are relatively mature.

Han Xia, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that the important role of 5G and the Industrial Internet in supporting the real economy to reduce costs, improve quality and efficiency, and promote green development has continued to emerge. In July this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology organized and implemented the "Dual Gigabit" network coordinated development action and the 5G application "Sailing" action to promote the coordinated development of 5G and gigabit optical networks. Accelerate the expansion of the integrated and innovative application of the Industrial Internet and 5G in key industries of the national economy, select industrial Internet industry demonstration bases, and publish a reference guide for the integrated application of the Industrial Internet and the steel industry. There are more than 1,800 "5G+Industrial Internet" projects under construction nationwide, and more than 12,000 application cases in the fourth "Blooming Cup" competition. On November 22, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released the second batch of "5G+Industrial Internet" typical application scenarios and key industry practices, including factory area intelligent tallying, full-domain logistics monitoring, virtual on-site services, and corporate collaboration... These are being promoted as typical application scenarios in more and more production and manufacturing links.

At present, there are still many problems to be solved in the distance of 5G application from "model house" to "commercial house". Chen Yami, 5G intelligent logistics architect of JD Logistics, said that in practice, it was found that 5G still had problems such as service capabilities, costs, integrated solutions, and integrated products. 5G "ToB" needs to make some more standardized and combinable standards to meet the needs of the industry. Li Bangyu, deputy chief engineer of the Central Research Institute of Siasun Robot Automation Co., Ltd., also talked about the cost issue. Because the profit margin of the manufacturing industry itself is relatively low, the cost requirements for the provision of manufacturing equipment are still relatively harsh. 5G equipment, 5G modules, CPE or firmware networks, and 5G tariffs are all areas that enterprises should focus on. The application of 5G in vertical industries cannot avoid the problem of fiber replacement. Zhuang Kan, technical director of Hisense Group, said that Hisense uses the flexibility, low latency and high-throughput network slicing of 5G networking to meet the rigid needs of industry for reliable performance and security. However, the scope of 5G application is limited, and it is basically used in some mobile scenarios-AGV, warehousing, flexible pipelines, etc. However, in some fixed scenarios, it is not as convenient as wired ones. At the same time, it is also inconvenient to use. It takes time and effort to "open the IoT card" and troubleshoot.

In this regard, Du Jiadong, deputy director of the 5G Application Innovation Center of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and chairman of the industry application group of the 5G industry square, said that the problems faced in 5G applications can be roughly divided into "application side, network side, and public side". In the future, the first thing is to strengthen the establishment of scenarios on the "application side", and some cross-border cooperation mechanisms are needed to ensure the development and implementation of business solutions. Secondly, in terms of cost issues, customized or sinking service models are needed, which will prompt the entire 5G network to transform from "ToC" to "ToB". First, the existing 5G network must be integrated with the existing systems of the industry to achieve seamless docking and achieve plug-and-play. Second, it is necessary to stipulate that the 5G network is oriented to industry services and end-to-end guarantees. Third, solve the problem of equipment cost and customize and lightweight the equipment. Fourth, to reduce terminal costs, a lot of work needs to be done on modules, chips, etc., and the problems of customization, high cost and high R&D must be solved.

With the joint efforts of all parties, the application scenarios of 5G have been continuously sorted out and summarized, and 5G has gradually penetrated into thousands of industries. Looking to the future, the "14th Five-Year Plan" Information and Communication Industry Development Plan points out that it is necessary to promote the accelerated transformation of 5G applications to industrialization and scale. 5G integrated applications are an important engine for promoting the digitalization, networking, and intelligent transformation of the economy and society. During the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will work with relevant ministries and local governments to focus on promoting 5G applications in 15 industries in the three major areas of information consumption, real economy, and people's livelihood services, create a new ecosystem of deep integration, achieve breakthroughs in the depth and breadth of 5G applications in key areas, build dual pillars of technology industry and standard system, and gradually form a development situation in which 5G applications "set sail".

Therefore, for the future development of 5G, the industry must play a "team game" in the development of 5G applications, with all parties complementing each other's strengths and working together to connect all aspects of technology, standards, products, solutions, etc. Strengthen cross-departmental, cross-industry, and cross-field alliances and industry associations to carry out extensive industry collaboration and docking cooperation, and create a "big ecosystem" of cross-industry collaboration. Today, my country has made 5G development a national strategy and one of the broader goals of digital transformation and improving international economic competitiveness. Therefore, as the industry rapidly integrates next-generation communication technologies to support key economic sectors such as manufacturing, healthcare, and transportation, 5G will help China's industries develop in different ways.