5G Thinking | Moderately Advance 5G Network Construction

Network construction is the cornerstone of 5G commercialization and business development, and the investment is huge. The strategy of network construction has always been the focus of attention of all parties. The author believes that in the construction of 5G networks, "it is better to let the road wait for the car than to let the car wait for the road". We should adhere to the principle of moderate advancement and build a wide-area coverage network for 2C and 2B at the same time, so as to provide a solid foundation for the prosperity of application innovation.

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First of all, judging from the pace of network construction, 5G network construction must adhere to the principle of moderate advancement and provide high-quality information infrastructure support for the prosperity of application innovation.

Moderately advanced 5G network construction is the foundation of application development and an important support for application innovation. From the perspective of the relationship between network and application, moderately advanced network construction is a common feature of public infrastructure. On the one hand, "moderate" means respecting the objective laws of 5G technology products and network maturity. my country is one of the first countries to commercialize 5G. It is necessary to drive the maturity of 5G technology industry through network construction and grasp the development rhythm of 5G network according to the maturity of technology industry. On the other hand, "advanced" means that network construction is the foundation of application development, and high-quality network is the key to commercial success. Therefore, in the practice of promoting network development, my country has established the principle of moderate advancement of "rather let the road wait for the car than let the car wait for the road". Most of the "killer" applications such as Weibo in the 3G era and short videos in the 4G era appeared 2 to 3 years after the commercial use of the network. At that time, the network coverage was relatively complete, creating good conditions for application innovation. At present, in order to maintain the leading edge of the network, it is necessary to continue to maintain the moderately advanced 5G network construction rhythm, expand the network coverage, improve the network supply capacity, and lead and create new demand with high-quality supply. In the one and a half years since 5G was put into commercial use in my country, more than 718,000 5G base stations have been built, achieving full coverage of all cities at the prefecture level and above. In 2021, my country has proposed the goal of building another 600,000 5G base stations to achieve deep coverage of 5G networks in cities at the prefecture level and above, which is more scientific and prudent.

Secondly, from the perspective of coverage, wide-area coverage is extremely important for the sustainable development of 5G and the improvement of user perception.

The construction of mobile communication networks starts with general breadth coverage, then optimizes deep coverage, and continuously improves the level of network coverage. 5G is no exception. 5G personal user services require a wide-area coverage network, and supporting digital applications in thousands of industries also requires a wide-coverage, high-quality 5G network. Many 2B applications carried out in a wider area, such as smart city management, ecological environment monitoring, and 5G ambulances, require wide-coverage 5G network support. In the industrial field, wide-area 5G networks are also needed to meet the needs of the industrial Internet characterized by intelligent production, networked collaboration, personalized customization, service extension, and digital management.

At present, the 5G network is still in the early stages of construction and has not yet reached the demand for effectively supporting 2B2C applications. This year, we need to continue to promote the extension of 5G networks to cities, counties, and key towns to provide wider and better coverage. At the same time, while building a 5G wide area network, my country should also focus on industry needs, carry out precise network construction, accelerate the construction of 5G industry virtual private networks for industry enterprises, and provide efficient, secure, and convenient solutions for vertical industries and large, medium and small enterprises to better serve the digital transformation of industry enterprise customers.

Thirdly, from the perspective of network deployment strategy, adhering to precise and intensive network construction and continuously reducing network construction costs are strong guarantees for the long-term steady development of 5G.

We have carried out precise and intensive network construction for differentiated scenario needs, implemented various measures such as co-construction and sharing, and opening up public resources, and have achieved remarkable results in continuously reducing the cost of 5G network construction. The initial investment in 5G network construction is large, but we should also see that the co-construction and sharing of cross-industry infrastructure resources such as communications, transportation, and municipal administration, as well as the policy measures such as the ongoing 5G cross-network roaming pilot in remote areas, will promote the continuous reduction of 5G network construction costs. For example, in the past year or so, China Telecom and China Unicom have co-built and shared 360,000 5G base stations, saving more than 70 billion yuan in construction costs. China Mobile and China Broadcasting Corporation are also cooperating in 5G construction to co-build and share 700MHz 5G networks. However, we should also recognize that due to the large bandwidth configuration, large-scale antenna application and stronger computing power of 5G base stations, the power consumption of 5G base stations is higher than that of 4G, which will correspondingly increase maintenance costs to a certain extent, and network operation and management is not yet intelligent enough. The next step is to promote industry enterprises to accelerate the engineering research of key technologies for low power consumption of 5G equipment and reduce the energy consumption of single equipment. In addition, we must make full use of innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence and automated network operations to uniformly monitor 5G equipment, conduct intelligent energy management and optimization, and improve energy utilization through refined management.

In summary, my country should continue to adhere to the principle of moderate advancement, combine wide-area networks with industry-specific networks, steadily advance 5G network construction, continuously optimize network construction strategies, operating strategies and policy environment, reduce deployment and operating costs of the entire network, continuously optimize the input-output ratio, actively cultivate 5G integrated applications, and accelerate the formation of a virtuous development model of "construction to promote use, and combining construction and use."