With the arrival of 5G, will the newly replaced 4G mobile phone become obsolete?

"Three Gigabits" will be implemented in Wuhan. This means that in the future, citizens will be able to enjoy Gigabit Internet services and smart applications, whether indoors or outdoors, wired or wireless, on mobile phones or computers. Some people may worry, "Does this mean that my 4G phone will be eliminated?"

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In fact, there is no need to worry. At the end of 2019, the "China 5G Economic Report 2020" was officially released. Zhang Jin, a researcher at the Industrial Planning Department of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges, said at the time that the Chinese government's active promotion, consumers' attitude towards embracing new technologies, China's status as a relatively large 5G market in the world, the launch of 5G industry fund investment, and the international competitiveness of the 5G industry chain are advantages for the development of China's 5G industry. In addition, Zhang Jin also said that the construction of 5G networks will be a gradual process. 4G and 5G will coexist in the next ten years. It is expected that the penetration rate of 5G users will be 48% in 2025.

The reporter learned from the relevant person in charge of the three major operators in Wuhan that one of the reasons is that the cost of building a 5G network is much higher than that of 4G. Since 5G uses a higher frequency band, its construction density needs to be greater, which means that within the same range, a single 4G base station can cover, but 5G may need several. In addition, the power consumption of 5G base stations is about 4-5 times higher than that of 4G base stations. This leads to the fact that although the 5G network is built quickly, it is not as fast as 4G.

In the 5G era, with the improvement of NAS (using existing 4G infrastructure to deploy 5G networks) base stations and the construction of SA independent networks (new 5G networks, including new base stations and core networks, etc.), the load of 4G will be greatly reduced, thereby increasing the speed. Therefore, users who are not in a hurry to experience the 5G network can continue to use the current 4G mobile phones, and the three major operators can still provide good 4G network support.

"You can first determine whether there is a 5G signal near your home, and then consider whether to change to a 5G phone." On the 15th, the reporter called Wuhan Mobile customer service to ask that if you want to use the 5G network, before changing to a 5G phone, you can first try to turn on the 5G phone and connect to the 5G function to see if there is 5G signal coverage and support for 5G functions. If so, you can consider choosing 5G.

At present, 4G packages and 5G packages are universal. For example, the reporter is currently using a 179 yuan package, which includes 600 minutes of talk time and 40G of data. If you switch to a 5G phone and use the 5G network, you will basically not have to pay more based on your previous data usage.

Therefore, in the 4G era, users' data usage has increased from MB to GB. In the 5G era, users will use more and more data. The specific cost will depend on users' data usage and operator package pricing, but one trend is that the unit price of data will become cheaper and cheaper.