China’s 5G leads the world!

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

Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released a report on the economic operation of the communications industry in the first half of 2021, and the three major operators also released their operating data for June. At this point, the report card for the entire communications industry in the first half of 2021 has been officially announced.

Here, I have extracted some data (as of the end of June) and shared some of my views.

1. There are a total of 1.64 billion mobile phone users in China, including 940 million for China Mobile, 310 million for China Unicom and 360 million for China Telecom.

It can be seen that the number of mobile phone users in China has far exceeded the national population, and the user growth has reached its ceiling. The number of China Mobile users far exceeds the sum of China Unicom and China Telecom users. It is very necessary for the latter two to compete with China Mobile through co-construction and sharing in the 5G era.

2. The number of 5G terminal connections nationwide is 365 million, and the number of 5G package users is 493 million, including 250 million for China Mobile, 113 million for China Unicom, and 130 million for China Telecom.

At present, the sum of the number of 5G package users of China Telecom and China Unicom is roughly the same as that of China Mobile. However, judging from the growth of the number of 5G package users, China Mobile had a net increase of 28.745 million in the first half of the year, while China Unicom and China Telecom had a net increase of 13.896 million in total, which is still lower than China Mobile. It is expected that the gap will widen in the future.

Among the users of these packages, 74% actually use 5G mobile phones. This proportion is already relatively high. With the normal metabolism of subsequent mobile phones, the proportion of 5G mobile phones will continue to increase.

3. The total number of mobile base stations nationwide is 9.48 million, of which 4G base stations are 5.84 million and 5G base stations are 961,000.

At present, China's 5G base stations account for 70% of the world's total, far ahead of the rest. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's latest "5G Application Sailing Plan" has set the following goals: by 2023, the penetration rate of 5G individual users will exceed 40%, and the number of users will exceed 560 million; the proportion of 5G network access traffic will exceed 50%; and there will be more than 18 5G base stations per 10,000 people. Therefore, it can be foreseen that in the next few years, China's 5G construction will continue, and the absolute number of base stations will continue to top the world.

In 2019, China accounted for more than half of the world's 4G base stations, while China's population accounted for about one-fifth of the world's total, which shows that our network coverage quality is much higher than the world average. As other countries accelerate the pace of 5G construction, China's 5G construction will gradually slow down, and it is expected that China's 5G base station share will also slowly decline, but it should be greater than the global share of 4G base stations for a long time.

4. The number of cellular Internet of Things users nationwide has reached 1.294 billion, a net increase of 158 million households over the end of last year. Among them, terminal users used in smart manufacturing, smart transportation, and smart public utilities accounted for 17.5%, 17.1%, and 22.6% respectively. The number of terminal users of smart public utilities increased by 23.3% year-on-year, with the most prominent growth.

This shows that the application of mobile communications in vertical industries is gradually deepening. From NB-IoT and eMTC based on 4G networks in previous years to eMBB, mMTC and uRLLC of 5G, the digital transformation of various industries is surging, and 5G will play the role of the foundation.

5. The average monthly traffic usage per user (DOU) was 13.52GB, a year-on-year increase of 33.4% and 1.6GB/user/month higher than the end of last year.

Only video applications can support such a huge amount of traffic consumption. With the advancement of 5G construction and the penetration of 5G mobile phones, people's demand for traffic consumption will be released again, continuously pushing up DOU.

As DOU continues to rise, new XR-based media, higher-definition videos, new interactive HD voice, and a variety of real-time cloud services will take root, thrive, and shape the new 5G ecosystem in a silent way.