The battle for 5G wide-area coverage has begun. Whose future do you think will be better?

On July 9, China Telecom and China Unicom simultaneously issued a tender announcement, officially launching the "2021 5G SA Construction Project Wireless Main Equipment (2.1G) Joint Centralized Procurement Project".

The announcement shows that there are 4 successful bidders, and the top 4 successful bidders in terms of comprehensive scores will win the bid. The winning share ratio is the quantity share ratio. The specific share allocation plan is as follows, consisting of two parts: basic share and dynamic share.

This means that the battle for national coverage between China Unicom Telecom's 2.1GHz and China Mobile's 700MHz has officially begun. In the 2.1GHz band, China Unicom Telecom Alliance has 2×60M FDD frequency resources, which will be used as a wide coverage band, and dynamically allocated through 4G and 5G, with 5G priority for dynamic scheduling.

Although 2.1GHz does not have the advantage of 700MHz in terms of frequency band resources, 2.1GHz does not encounter as complicated frequency clearing work as 700MHz.

Just a few days ago, on July 2, the China Public Tendering and Bidding Service Platform issued an announcement that the bidding for the 700MHz frequency clearance project for radio and television with a budget of 1.8 billion yuan failed because the number of valid bidders was less than three.

Tender failed

To support the 700MHz 5G construction, a frequency clearance tender was issued before China Mobile's base station equipment procurement on June 25 (see "700MHz, it's coming" for details).

On June 21, China Radio and Television issued its first tender notice, and the tender for the EPC project of China Radio and Television's national terrestrial digital TV 700MHz frequency project has been launched. The total construction period of this project is about one year. It is planned to be carried out in a construction and operation mode according to the progress of the 5G 700MHz network construction of China Radio and Television. China Radio and Television needs to transform the existing transmitter system and antenna feeder system of radio and television transmission stations across the country.

Radio and Television 700MHz frequency clearance

On July 5, China's public bidding platform released the China Radio and Television National Terrestrial Digital TV 700MHz Frequency Migration Project Engineering General Contracting (EPC) (2nd) bidding announcement. The total bidding amount is still 1.8 billion. If the bidding goes well, the bidding results will be announced on July 26.

According to statistics, the 700MHz frequency band only requires more than 400,000 base station devices to cover the entire country. Although radio and television have the trump card of 700MHz, it is not easy to build a network covering the entire country. Therefore, 700MHz is built in a shared manner between radio and television and mobile, which is an important means for radio and television to enter 5G.

However, the 700MHz frequency band involves a complex industry chain with many stakeholders. For radio and television, frequency clearance is very complicated. It not only requires the integration of the national network, but also the smooth transition of existing network services in various regions. This will inevitably require nationwide cooperation and assistance, and the workload of frequency clearance is huge. Soon, China Mobile will also announce the results of the centralized procurement of base station equipment. The 700MHz frequency clearance work also needs to enter the substantive stage as soon as possible.