The number of terminal connections has exceeded 200 million, and 5G commercial use still needs to break through

Recently, data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed that in 2020, more than 600,000 new 5G base stations were built in my country, 5G networks were fully covered in all cities at prefecture level and above, the number of 5G terminal connections exceeded 200 million, and the digitalization process of various industries continued to accelerate. Under this circumstance, the commercialization of 5G in my country has attracted much attention.

"The 200 million terminals mainly come from mobile phones, including some industry terminals. As of December 2020, 5G mobile phone shipments accounted for 68.4%." Peng Jian, deputy director of the Radio Management Institute of CADI think tank, told reporters that 5G mobile phones have become the mainstream of the market and the preferred choice for users to change phones. As of December 2020, the average monthly Internet traffic (DOU) per mobile phone user has reached nearly 12GB, and 5G has played a huge role in the rapid growth of Internet traffic.

It is worth mentioning that China Mobile has opened 390,000 5G base stations, which can provide 5G independent networking services for all prefecture-level cities and some key county towns across the country. This means that for most urban mobile phone users, 5G network has become another optional primary network service after 4G. From the comparison of 4G and 5G data over the same period, one year after commercial use, the number of base stations of the two is basically the same, but the number of users is quite different - as of the end of 2014, the number of 4G users in my country was 97.284 million, and as of the end of 2020, the number of 5G package users of China Mobile and China Telecom alone exceeded 250 million, with a penetration rate of more than 16%. With strong policy support and the joint efforts of all parties in the industry chain, 5G has exceeded the user scale of 4G over the same period.

Industry insiders generally believe that 5G has promoted the transformation and upgrading of user information consumption. People are paying more and more attention to new terminals such as VR/AR smart headsets, wearable devices, and Internet of Things products, and consumption potential will continue to be released.

"From the perspective of the personal consumer market, although 5G has not yet seen phenomenal applications like live streaming in the 4G era, the construction of any generation of mobile communication networks must respect its objective development laws. Applications for mobile phone users, such as ultra-high-definition video, 5G messaging, and 5G cloud games, still need to be explored by all parties in the industry chain," said Peng Jian.

"In more than a year since 5G was commercialized, industry applications have achieved a breakthrough from 0 to 1." Wang Zhiqin, deputy director of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that currently, more than 2,300 companies across the country have carried out more than 4,200 5G innovative application projects and actively explored in many fields such as ports, mines, medical care, transportation, energy, and intelligent manufacturing.

Taking the application of 5G in the field of intelligent manufacturing as an example, the chemical fiber industry in which Xinfengming Group is engaged has many production processes, among which "floating silk" and "floating impurities" often occur in the spinning process. The traditional solution is to rely on human eyes to distinguish, but due to the low frequency of inspections, missed inspections often occur, so the industry's quality rate is always stuck at around 98%. In order to improve the quality rate, Xinfengming Group has built a 5G smart workshop-an inspection robot using an 8K high-definition camera replaces manual inspections to meet ultra-high precision detection requirements. At the same time, based on the high bandwidth and low latency capabilities of 5G, the big data collected by the robot can be transmitted to the monitoring center in real time, and the data required for the business can be generated through the analysis of the background intelligent analysis algorithm. It is estimated that this will effectively improve the quality rate and bring 20 million yuan in direct benefits to the group each year.

"Although my country's 5G network construction has made a good start, industry applications are still in the introduction stage. Problems such as weak industrial foundation support and unclear business models still exist. It is difficult to eliminate cross-industry integration barriers, and it will take time to achieve large-scale applications." In Wang Zhiqin's view, the next step should be to vigorously promote 5G integrated applications and form a benign development model of "building to promote use, and using to promote construction". Encourage all industries to carry out technological innovation for application scenarios, select integrated application demonstration benchmarks, and issue implementation guidelines for key industry applications. Accelerate the promotion of 5G applications in key industries such as industrial Internet, medical care, energy, and ports, expand the demonstration role of 5G in other fields such as online education and logistics, and create more typical application scenarios.

At the same time, it is necessary to promote the construction of public service platforms such as 5G testing laboratories and innovation centers in various places, and unite all parties in the industry to carry out 5G application model innovation and key technology research and development, 5G application testing and verification, business model incubation, etc. "Accelerate 5G application certification and supply and demand docking, and incubate and cultivate a group of solution providers who understand both 5G and industry applications based on industry application needs." Wang Zhiqin said.