One year after official commercial use! Some people are standing outside the door and watching, but are "influenced by 5G"

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Since the issuance of 5G licenses last year, China's 5G network construction has entered the "fast lane". It is reported that investment in new information infrastructure represented by 5G has increased. So far, a total of more than 800,000 5G base stations have been deployed worldwide, and as of the end of September, 690,000 5G base stations have been opened nationwide. This means that the goal of 500,000 5G base stations set at the beginning of the year has been completed ahead of schedule, basically achieving 5G coverage at the prefecture and city levels, and China's 5G construction progress ranks first in the world. While the construction of base stations is progressing rapidly, 5G terminals are becoming more and more abundant and prices are also falling sharply. It is understood that 207 5G terminals have obtained network access licenses, of which 34 brands of 5G mobile phones have 180 models, and many are priced below 2,000 yuan.

Wandering outside the 5G "door": Using a 4G package with a 5G phone

Although the price of 5G terminals is gradually decreasing, the high package charges that come with it are prohibitive for many consumers. In the end, some users "hold 5G phones but still use 4G packages."

In response to this, the official response stated that in terms of the settings of 5G packages, most of them include traffic, voice and speed, etc., which are different for different operators. And according to the operators, different grades of 5G packages provide different 5G services. Cai Zhengxing, head of the Public Market Development Department of China Mobile's Market Operation Department, explained that in the future, as the penetration rate of 5G continues to increase and the number of users increases, 4G and 5G packages will gradually converge, so in terms of the price of 5G packages, they will not be more expensive than 4G, but on the contrary, the unit price will be lower.

In addition to some consumers being "discouraged" by prices, technical issues such as a lack of applications and poor network coverage have also caused users to be skeptical about 5G. The "bad reviews" of some netizens have also become one of the reference standards for users before changing their tariff packages.

Earlier, Ding Yun, executive director of Huawei and president of the Carrier BG, also said that in the early stages of 5G network deployment, China's 5G industry still has a lot of work to do if it wants to achieve greater success. For example, there is still a gap in user experience in the personal business field, that is, the problem of "fake, dumb, and poor"; on the other hand, the area where 5G mobile phone users are located may not have 5G network coverage. Overall, the matching degree of "machine", "network" and "package" is still not high.

In general, when it comes to whether to use 5G networks, more users choose to stand outside and wait and see.

Being forced into 5G: No choice but 5G

But it is worth noting that users who have not yet chosen to apply for 5G tariff packages may also be "forced by 5G".

According to the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology's "September 2020 Domestic Mobile Phone Market Operation Analysis Report", from January to September this year, the cumulative shipments of 5G mobile phones in the domestic market reached 108 million units, and the total shipments last year reached 122 million units. According to the latest data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of now, there are more than 150 million 5G users in China. It can be seen that many users of 5G packages are still using 4G phones or even 3G phones.

However, in the apps of major operators, 5G packages are placed in a more prominent position, and the entry for 4G packages has disappeared. According to industry sources, in order to promote 5G packages, operators have quietly removed low-priced 4G packages from the shelves. If users need to apply for 4G packages, they can only go through offline business halls and telephone customer service. In some areas, telecom operators have even directly removed 4G packages from the shelves. Old users can only choose the newly launched 5G packages when changing packages or new users can only choose the newly launched 5G packages. Once users choose to upgrade to 5G packages, they may no longer be able to apply to change back to 4G.

It is understood that the three major operators have recently adopted a similar strategy of "tightening 4G and promoting 5G", merging some 4G packages with 5G packages, or directly removing some low-priced 4G packages from the shelves.

In addition to the common operator telephone promotions, bundling promotions with mobile phone brands, stores, etc. is also one of the means. It is understood that starting from April this year, operators have gradually increased subsidies for mobile phone manufacturers. However, unlike the contract phone method in the 3G/4G era, now it is through this subsidy method for purchasing phones from dealers, stores, and e-commerce platforms that mobile phone manufacturers are more willing to speed up the launch and sales of 5G mobile phones, and at the same time, achieve rapid growth in the number of users of their own 5G packages.

The achievements of 5G commercialization in the first year are obvious, but operators, all parties in the industry chain and users are facing problems such as low technology maturity, large network construction investment, high operating costs, insufficient core applications, and difficulty in cost recovery. Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, pointed out that the maturity of 5G technology is in line with the development law of mobile communications. Looking at the entire construction cycle, the return on investment of 5G is also comparable to that of 4G. The common problems in the early stage of commercialization of the above new technologies need to be solved through continuous innovation during development.