Experts talk about 5G development: If 5G wants to explode, the industry chain still needs to work hard

At present, 5G has become an important engine for the digital transformation of my country's economy. Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a symposium on the solid promotion of 5G development to study the ideas and measures to promote the construction and application of 5G. How 5G will be built and developed in 2021 and how the industrial ecosystem will be constructed are the focus of great attention in the industry. To this end, in response to the current hot spots of 5G development in the industry, the reporter interviewed Yang Guang, a senior analyst in the field of wireless communications at SA, and Jin Feng, an expert in the communications industry.

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5G coverage is moving towards deeper and wider

So far, my country has built nearly 700,000 5G base stations, covering most of the major cities. Next year, the coverage of 5G base stations will be wider. According to Jin Feng's prediction, the construction of 5G base stations will show a trend of developing from wide coverage to deep coverage in key cities, and from point coverage to wide coverage in counties and villages.

The wider deployment of 5G base stations in 2021 will also face more difficulties. In the process of network coverage, 5G needs to deploy more base stations. How to strike a balance between network quality and deployment and operating costs is a question that operators need to think about. Yang Guang believes: "Network equipment energy consumption is a major problem. Operators and equipment manufacturers need to work together to reduce the energy consumption of 5G network equipment, thereby reducing 5G operating costs."

Diversified spectrum resources can achieve a balance between network performance and cost. Mid- and low-frequency bands, such as 700MHz and 2.1GHz, will play a key role in diversified deployment, but operators and the industry need to work together to expand the product portfolio of network equipment, promote the maturity of network and terminal products, and meet the deployment needs of indoor and rural scenarios with more cost-effective network products.

Most 5G feature applications occur in indoor environments or during commuting. Targeted network coverage will help accelerate user migration and increase 5G usage. Jin Feng suggested: "In the construction of indoor micro base stations, innovative models such as gateway + base station can be adopted to achieve more points of deployment." At the same time, industry-specific networks will become the standard for vertical industry applications.

Next year, 5G base station construction will face more severe site selection issues, and planning must be strengthened. Jin Feng said: "The government needs to coordinate more site resources, and operators also need to make good plans for network construction, unify operations and scheduling, and further realize site sharing."

Dedicated terminals will gradually become mainstream

While the 5G "highway" is being laid out at an accelerated pace, it is also necessary to attach great importance to the development of 5G featured services and applications. "Only with sufficiently attractive featured services can consumers migrate to 5G faster," said Yang Guang.

In the process of 5G business development, terminals are closely related and inseparable from it. Against the backdrop of falling prices for chips and modules, the threshold and price center of mobile phones will continue to move downward, and more innovative 5G pan-intelligent terminals will continue to emerge, attracting more 5G users. The decline in industry terminal prices will also become an important driving force for the development of industry applications. Jin Feng said: "Specialized terminals combined with scenarios will gradually become mainstream."

The increase in 5G network speed and the maturity of the terminal industry chain will also promote the development of new applications such as VR, AR, and cloud games. At the same time, ultra-high-definition audio, ultra-high-definition video, VR and other technologies will be more widely used as terminal display effects and production technologies advance.

In 2020, many benchmark applications have emerged in vertical industries, and 5G industry applications will have more room for development next year. Jin Feng said: "Based on the application pilots in 2020, it is expected that industry applications such as smart mines, smart logistics, drones, and smart factories will become popular as technology costs and costs decrease."

In Yang Guang's view, remote control and machine vision applications may become the first ToB applications to be widely deployed. However, applications cannot be mature overnight, and operators, communication equipment manufacturers, industry users and industry solution providers need to work closely together to reduce the deployment cost of 5G industry applications and promote the improvement of business models.

Application incubation has always been the focus and difficulty of 5G development. The industry chain needs to further improve content creation, terminal development and popularization, and business model construction. To truly achieve the explosion of 5G applications, the upstream and downstream of the industry chain need to work together.