Can the commercial trial of 5G messaging truly open the door to the 5G economy?

At the "2021 China International Information and Communication Exhibition" held not long ago, senior executives of China Unicom and China Telecom jointly revealed that they will start trial commercial use of 5G messages at the end of October or early November this year. As soon as the news came out, 5G messages once again became a hot search on Weibo, and behind it is the industry's expectation for 5G messages: 5G messages are regarded as 5G killer applications. Although their commercial use is late, they are expected to create new models and cultivate new formats, thus opening up a true 5G digital economy era.

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The industry is generally full of expectations for the 5G economy, believing that the new generation of information and communication technologies represented by 5G will become an important driving force for high-quality economic and social development, and will profoundly change people's production and lifestyles.

Before we know it, 5G commercial use has almost reached its second anniversary. During this period, my country's 5G construction has developed rapidly. By the end of August, a total of 1.037 million 5G base stations had been built, covering all prefecture-level cities in the country, more than 95% of county towns and 35% of townships; the number of 5G terminal users in my country exceeded 400 million, the largest user group in the world.

Although my country has been at the forefront of 5G construction in the world, the 5G economy has not yet truly arrived. Looking back at the history of mobile communications, text messages were born in the 2G era, mobile Internet was born in the 3G era, and social and video apps appeared in the 4G era. However, in addition to faster network speeds and lower latency, 5G currently does not bring a true killer application experience. All services can be achieved on 4G phones, and users have no sufficient reason to upgrade to 5G. Therefore, the real 5G economic era has not yet arrived.

Since the birth of 5G, the industry has been looking for 5G's killer applications. Judging from the current exploration, 5G messages are highly anticipated. 5G messages are characterized by rich media, high accessibility, and lightweight. For individual users, 5G messages provide point-to-point messaging and group chat services, supporting text, pictures, audio and video, etc. Users can send and receive 5G messages without downloading APP and adding friends; for industry users, 5G messages can realize "message as a service", supporting users to pay and recharge, order tickets, query logistics, place takeout orders, etc. directly in the message window. With rich multimedia message delivery capabilities and high-speed service promotion capabilities, 5G messages provide a huge space for exploration for the industry, especially for many "waist enterprises" and small and medium-sized enterprises. 5G messages provide fair and fast user access channels, opening up unlimited space and possibilities.

Given the importance of 5G messaging, 5G messaging has attracted much attention since the three major operators jointly released the "5G Message White Paper" in April last year. During this period, there have been multiple versions of the time point for the trial commercialization of 5G messaging, but it is still in the works. From the initial attention and anticipation to a slight cooling, 5G messaging is no longer the initial phenomenal topic.

Whether under the spotlight or not, whether trial commercialization or commercialization is officially launched, the industry is persistently promoting the development of 5G messaging. For example, as early as October 2020, China Mobile had already opened trial commercial docking in 15 pilot provinces; China Telecom and China Unicom completed the construction of two regional MaaP platforms, supporting simultaneous sending of 10 million users, and China Telecom has opened access applications for partners. From the terminal side, ZTE, Huawei, Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, Samsung, etc. have launched models that support 5G messaging, especially ZTE has 14 mobile phones that support it.

In addition to building well, 5G also needs to be used well. At present, the industry has begun to explore the application of 5G messages. In the final of the 5G message competition of the "Blooming Cup" 5G application collection competition, which was concluded recently, a total of 400 projects participated in the registration, covering government affairs, education, medical care, travel, express delivery, media, culture and tourism, finance, consumption and other fields. The huge economic value and social benefits of 5G messages are beginning to emerge. The upcoming trial commercial use of 5G messages will surely accelerate the development of 5G messages, promote the pilot "model room" to become a large-scale "commercial housing", and turn the 5G "bonsai" into a "scenery".

Of course, 5G messages still face some problems that need to be solved urgently, such as the need to further enhance the support of terminal manufacturers, the need to continue to explore the business model, and security issues that are still a "stumbling block". Therefore, the 5G message industry chain needs to work together to solve commercial problems with more practical actions and accelerate the commercialization of 5G messages.