Analysis on the current status of global 5G development

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This article is reprinted from the WeChat public account "Wireless Deep Sea", the author is Fei Caicai. Please contact the Wireless Deep Sea public account to reprint this article.

5G has been in commercial use for two years since its first commercial launch in 2019. How is this new generation of mobile communication technology developing globally?

To examine the development of 5G, the two most intuitive dimensions are to look at the two communicating parties: the network and the terminal. Below we will take a look at the current status of 5G based on this GSA report for the first half of 2021.

1. 169 operators in 70 countries around the world have launched 5G. Together with operators that are investing in 5G, the total number has exceeded 400. This number is already very large.

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2. Europe, Asia-Pacific, and North America are the first-mover regions of 5G, and have basically completed the commercial use of 5G networks; South Asia, Eastern Europe, North Africa, Central and South America and other regions are also following closely to carry out 5G deployment and pre-commercial use; in sub-Saharan Africa, 5G is still blank in most areas.

3. Judging from the maximum 5G speeds advertised by 54 operators, most of them are between 1Gbps and 2Gbps, which is basically the capability that 100M bandwidth on Sub6G can bring; some operators can reach more than 4Gbps, which should be the result of deploying large-bandwidth millimeter waves.

In any case, the average speed announced by these 54 operators has reached 1145Gbps, far exceeding the network capacity in the 4G era, highlighting the advantages of 5G.

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4. Judging from the 5G spectrum invested by various operators, n77 (3300~4200MHz) and n78 (3300~3800MHz) are the absolute mainstream, followed by the three millimeter wave bands n257, n258 and n261, followed by 700MHz, 2.6GHz, 2100MHz, 1800MHz and other bands.

In China, in addition to 3.5GHz and 2.6GHz as the capacity layer, 2100MHz will serve as the deep coverage layer for China Unicom and China Telecom, and 700MHz is being built as the wide coverage layer for China Mobile and Radio and Television.

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5. At present, NSA is still the mainstream of 5G deployment network, but the growth rate is gradually slowing down; SA network has appeared since Q3 2020 and has been growing year by year. With the large-scale deployment of 5G in China, it will drive the rapid development of 5G in vertical industries and catalyze the maturity of SA ecosystem.

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Regions that invest in 5G SA are all 5G early adopters, such as North America, Europe, China, South Korea, Australia, etc. This shows that the advantages of SA networks have been recognized by advanced regions.

6. The number of terminals supporting 5G SA continues to grow rapidly, exceeding 50% of the total. At present, all mainstream chip manufacturers have mature products that support NSA and SA dual-mode, so the newly released terminals all support SA in hardware. Manufacturers may make targeted software configurations based on the network conditions of different countries.

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7. From the frequency bands supported by terminals, the two TDD bands n78 and n41 are absolutely mainstream, which should be closely related to the Chinese market, especially n41 (2600MHz). Following closely is the FDD band n1 (2100MHz), which was once used for 3G and 4G. Many operators choose to re-cultivate part of the bandwidth for 5G to improve coverage.

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8. There are many types of 5G terminals. In addition to the most common mobile phones, there are also CPE for FWA, industrial routers and gateways, and application devices such as vehicle-mounted routers, which illustrates the wide range of 5G applications.

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At present, the global deployment of 5G has gradually grown from a spark in China, the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea to a prairie fire across the five continents. Such soil is fertile enough, and the killer applications we have been thinking about may have been accumulating energy underground for a long time and are about to break out of the ground.