Is 4G still better? China Mobile suddenly admitted: 50 million 5G users do not use 5G network

At the 2021 Mobile World Congress, Liu Liehong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said that China has invested 260 billion yuan in 5G base station construction. Currently, the three major operators have built a total of about 718,000 base stations, accounting for 70% of the total number of 5G base stations in the world, and have more than 200 million access devices.

At present, 5G network has been fully covered in key areas of first- and second-tier cities in China, and most of the newly released flagship phones on the market also support 5G network. Therefore, many netizens said that they have received calls and text messages from operators many times, "fooling" themselves to activate 5G packages. Recently, Jian Qin, deputy general manager of China Mobile, disclosed the details of domestic 5G package users for the first time.

Jian Qin said that in 2020, China Mobile added 160 million 5G package users, but there were only 110 million active 5G network terminal users, which means that 50 million people have opened 5G packages but are not using the 5G network. In his speech, China Telecom Chairman Ke Ruiwen said that China's 5G package users have exceeded 300 million.

According to data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, by the end of 2020, the sales volume of 5G mobile phones in the domestic market was about 177 million. Considering users who hold multiple mobile phone cards and 5G mobile phones with 4G packages, the "water injection rate" of 5G package users is about 30%. As for access devices, there are more than 200 million, including AIot, 5G robots, drones, industrial CPE and other equipment in addition to mobile phones.

According to the feedback from netizens, the main reason for the high water injection rate of 5G package users is that 5G does not significantly improve the experience of individual users. Due to the small number of base stations, the network stability in some areas is even worse than 4G. In this regard, Ke Ruiwen frankly admitted that 5G is still in its early stages of development and personal scenarios are not rich enough.

In terms of 5G network access devices, the number of individual users can only reflect the development indicators of 5G networks, while the number of industrial, AIot and other equipment accesses shows the prosperity of 5G network applications. The high bandwidth and low latency characteristics of 5G networks can drive the development of cloud-based artificial intelligence, remote control and other technologies, which is of great significance to the informatization and intelligentization of China's industry.

Therefore, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a license to use the 5G golden frequency band 700MHz to the three major operators at the beginning of this year. The coverage area of ​​this frequency band can reach about 5 times that of 3.5GHz, which can reduce the construction and maintenance costs of 5G base stations. China Radio and Television, the fourth largest operator in China, has confirmed that it will jointly build 700MHz 5G base stations with China Mobile. It is expected that 5G full coverage of units above the county level will be achieved within this year, and it will be developed towards key towns. By 2022, except for some remote areas, most areas in China will achieve 5G coverage.

Of course, if we want everyone to experience the changes brought about by 5G networks, the focus is still on building a related application ecosystem and constantly exploring other possibilities at the Internet level.