Full coverage of prefecture-level cities! China has built the world's largest 5G network

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In the year hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, China's 5G construction was not affected.

"China has built the world's largest 5G network, with a total of 718,000 5G base stations built and promoted the joint construction and sharing of 330,000 5G base stations." At the 2021 China Academy of Information and Communications Technology ICT In-depth Observation Report Conference held on December 15, 2020, Liu Liehong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said this.

A reporter from China Business News noticed that at the National Industrial and Information Technology Work Conference held at the end of 2019, Miao Wei, then Minister of Industry and Information Technology, revealed that 126,000 5G base stations had been opened across the country in 2019, and the country was striving to achieve 5G network coverage in all prefecture-level cities by the end of 2020.

Now, a year later, the number of 5G base stations has increased nearly fivefold. "In 2020, we added about 580,000 5G base stations." At the State Council Information Office press conference held on December 24, 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's spokesperson Wen Ku reconfirmed this data to the media. At the same time, Wen Ku also confirmed that my country has achieved 5G network coverage in all cities and counties, completing the established goal.

In terms of 5G terminals, Wen Ku said that the number of connections in my country has exceeded 200 million. From January to November, the domestic market shipped 144 million 5G mobile phones, and a total of 199 new mobile phone models were launched, accounting for about half of all mobile phones in the same period.

In addition, Wen Ku revealed that my country's 5G applications also made rapid progress in 2020. 5G has achieved good results in hot areas such as smart manufacturing, medical care, and energy. The application models in multiple scenarios such as mines, ports, and manufacturing are becoming increasingly clear and can be copied and applied in other industries.

5G construction grows against the trend

In the communications industry, there was once a widely circulated saying: "1G blank, 2G followed, 3G breakthrough, 4G synchronization, 5G surpass". It can be used to describe the arduous and hard-working struggle of China's communications industry, and it also represents the country's vision for the bright prospects of 5G.

However, the sudden outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 disrupted the initial plan, especially in the first quarter, when the pandemic affected the construction of 5G base stations in many places. According to the recollections of several local operators, during the pandemic in the first quarter of 2020, the deployment of base stations was still being vigorously promoted, but due to manpower and traffic restrictions, the deployment speed was greatly reduced. "At that time, we didn't know when it would end," one of the people told reporters.

Even so, domestic operators still managed to deliver a good report card at the end of the first quarter. "During the epidemic, more than 63,000 new 4G and 5G base stations were built, further consolidating the network foundation for communication service guarantee." Han Xia, director of the Information and Communications Administration of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, proudly stated at a press conference at the end of March 2020.

In the second quarter, after the country gradually resumed production and work, operators also stepped up their construction efforts. In October 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that the cumulative number of 5G base stations in my country had reached 690,000, basically achieving 5G coverage at the prefecture-level and completing the annual 5G construction progress target ahead of schedule. On November 7, Li Zhengmao, general manager of China Telecom, announced at the 2020 Tianyi Smart Ecosystem Expo that China Telecom and China Unicom had completed the annual 5G co-construction and sharing construction tasks ahead of schedule, with a total of 320,000 5G base stations opened, covering more than 300 cities, and building the world's largest co-construction and sharing 5G network.

Then on November 20, Yang Jie, Chairman of China Mobile, introduced at the 2020 China Mobile Global Partner Conference that China Mobile has opened 385,000 5G base stations across the country and has 90 million 5G terminal users, exceeding the 2020 5G construction target ahead of schedule.

At this point, the three major operators have successfully achieved their 5G construction goals for 2020. Wei Liurong, deputy chief engineer of the Policy and Economic Research Institute of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, pointed out in his interpretation of the "White Paper on China's 5G Development and Economic and Social Impact (2020)" (hereinafter referred to as the "White Paper") recently released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology that in the past year since the commercial use of 5G, China has built the world's largest 5G commercial network, with independent networking taking the lead in large-scale commercial use, significantly improving network performance, and making positive progress in the exploration of virtual private networks. Moderately advanced network construction provides a solid foundation for the development of 5G applications, and the potential for 5G to have an impact on the economy and society has begun to emerge.

"Specifically, first, it is pushing the ICT industry onto a new growth track; second, its extensive integration with thousands of industries is opening up broad space for innovative development of the economy and society; third, it is driving the adjustment and upgrading of my country's employment structure, creating new jobs and promoting the shift of the labor market from low-skilled jobs to high-skilled jobs." Wei Liurong said.

According to the White Paper, 5G will directly drive a total economic output of 810.9 billion yuan and an economic added value of 189.7 billion yuan in 2020. According to reporters, during the epidemic, a number of applications such as remote diagnosis and treatment, intelligent robots, remote office, and remote education were spawned. At the same time, scene applications in industries such as energy, agriculture, education, and finance have also been gradually implemented. A new 5G integrated application ecosystem is taking shape.

Cost and application are key

While China's 5G development is progressing at a rapid pace, we should also see that the challenges remain severe.

Although 5G applications in specific areas have achieved certain development during the epidemic, the entire 5G market is still relatively blank, and 5G still faces many challenges in releasing its growth potential. "First, 5G networks have not yet achieved nationwide coverage; second, the technical maturity of 5G-supported industry applications needs to be improved; third, the application supporting industry is still in the early stages of cultivation; fourth, the cross-industry industry ecosystem has not yet been established," Wei Liurong pointed out.

During the communication process between the reporter and many people in the communications industry, it was learned that 5G base stations are deployed densely, in large numbers, and each station is more expensive. The resulting high network construction costs and high operation and maintenance costs are the main reasons why the current 5G network is still far from ideal.

According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, under the same coverage, the number of 5G mid-frequency band base stations will be about 1.5 times that of 4G. Due to the high cost of 5G equipment in the early stage, the scale of investment in 5G networks will be 2 to 3 times that of 4G. In addition to the wireless network, the deployment of 5G networks also includes transmission networks and core networks. The cost of the transmission network converted to a single base station is about 50,000 to 100,000 yuan, and the one-way cost of the 5G core network in the early stage of deployment is about 10 million to 30 million yuan.

At the same time, according to the reporter's understanding, when the number was small in the early stage, the power consumption of a single 5G base station was 3 to 4 times that of 4G, which also made the energy consumption of 5G base stations appear on the hot list of news many times in 2020. In addition, problems such as difficult site selection, difficult property access, and high rents are also widely present. "Some office buildings and community properties charge building access fees of more than 300,000 yuan per station." An operator revealed to the reporter.

In the process of 5G industry application implementation, the problem of "the government is enthusiastic, the communications industry is enthusiastic, and related industries are indifferent" is also more prominent. In this regard, Thundersoft CTO Zou Pengcheng believes that lowering the threshold for customers to accept new technologies, helping related industries understand 5G technology and applications, the government providing project support, and encouraging service providers to establish system service provision platforms or think tanks are the homework that the industry urgently needs to make up.

"We need to have an objective understanding. We must realize that this is an inevitable problem faced in the early stages of 5G commercial development." Wei Liurong said when analyzing the causes of the above problems that compared with 3G/4G, my country's 5G development time rhythm has two special features: First, my country realized 5G commercialization earlier. Second, 5G will expand industry applications, and the industrial ecology and model require a longer period of cultivation and exploration.

"After all, the commercial development of 5G is still in its early stages. I hope everyone will have more patience with the development of 5G applications," Wei Liurong emphasized.

5G sites to be built in 2021 may exceed one million

With the arrival of 2021, the 5G industry will also usher in new expectations.

The most concerned issue is still the number of 5G base stations. According to a research report by CICC, the three major operators will build 100,000 new 5G base stations in the fourth quarter of 2020, and there will be nearly 800,000 5G base stations by the end of the year. In 2021, there will be 800,000 to 1 million new stations, nearly twice the construction volume in 2020. This figure was also confirmed by Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering. He said that as the pace of commercialization accelerates, the cost of base station construction will be further reduced, and 5G construction will be fully accelerated in 2021, and the country is expected to build more than 1 million new 5G base stations.

The reporter also verified this figure at the ICT In-depth Observation Report Conference of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology. Liu Duo, president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that specific data has not yet been released. However, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is working with relevant operators to formulate a plan for 2021. "The construction of 5G networks is steadily advancing in accordance with the principle of moderate advancement, closely following the needs of different scenarios, objectively analyzing and building on demand." Liu Duo said.

The "White Paper" released by the institute at the same time also pointed out that in the next two to three years, the development of the 5G industry will enter a critical period. During this period, my country's 5G network construction will continue to advance and gradually achieve wide-area coverage. Consumer-level innovative applications with 5G characteristics may show scale growth from 2022 to 2023. Industry applications will still be in the introduction stage and will be gradually put into commercial use in batches.

"This period is not only a cultivation period for the 5G application ecosystem, but also an important window period for manufacturers to accumulate strength and accelerate transformation and growth." Wei Liurong said that in the next two years, applications such as live broadcast and monitoring based on ultra-high-definition video, and intelligent identification will be implemented first. At the same time, 5G network technology will be more prominent in enhanced Internet of Vehicles, ultra-high reliability and low latency, high-precision positioning, and virtual private networks.

In addition, the "White Paper" predicts that more new products and new business models will appear in the 5G industry, industry modules are expected to expand in scale, the development of pan-terminals will be accelerated, mobile edge computing will be deployed more quickly, and industry enabling platforms will gradually grow.

From a broader perspective, the new infrastructure in 2020 will include 5G in seven major sectors, which has also injected a policy booster into the post-epidemic industrial development. With the "14th Five-Year Plan" clearly proposing the systematic layout of new infrastructure, accelerating the construction of the fifth generation of mobile communications, industrial Internet, big data centers, and promoting the deep integration of the Internet of Things, big data, artificial intelligence and other industries, the policy dividends of the 5G industry will be released to a greater extent.

In this regard, Wei Liurong emphasized that we must fully grasp this opportunity, accelerate the development of 5G, support the overall comprehensive upgrade of 5G, promote its integration with thousands of industries, generate more new products, new businesses, and new services, and promote the comprehensive development of the digital economy.

The China Academy of Information and Communications Technology predicts that by 2025, China will account for 30% of the world's connections, and by then China's 5G users will reach 816 million, accounting for about 48% of the world's mobile users, which means that China will have the world's largest 5G market. There is no doubt that with the support of multiple favorable policies, industries, and markets, the development of my country's 5G industry in 2021 is worth looking forward to.