5G! Your future is unimaginable

Nowadays, 5G seems to be like the swallows flying in front of the halls of the wealthy and powerful in the old days. Now, it has flown into all walks of life. From this perspective, 5G seems to be very cheap, but what will the actual costs and benefits of 5G be? And what will the future of 5G be like? Let's take a look.

Costs and Benefits

At this stage, the cost of 5G is high for major operators. Because the signal penetration is reduced at a higher frequency band, even in Shenzhen, there are no 5G signals in some business districts. The characteristics of 5G determine that it needs to cover more base stations. There were news reports earlier that operators would hibernate 5G base stations when no one was using 5G to reduce electricity expenses. It can be seen that the investment in a 5G base station is huge, and even operators need to increase revenue and reduce expenditure. Judging from various procurement bids, the unit price of 5G base station equipment is about 400,000 yuan, and if a series of other costs are added to the construction of the entire core backbone network, the cost will be an astronomical figure.

In addition to high-frequency base stations, the three major operators are also accelerating the decommissioning and re-cultivation of 2G/3G networks. Taking my personal situation as an example, since 2018, I have hardly ever connected to the Telecom 3G network, and I can no longer search for Telecom 3G signals. The only signals are Telecom 4G or 2G. The advantage of re-cultivation is that operators can reuse lower frequency bands and deploy base stations to achieve better signal coverage under the same circumstances. But even so, decommissioning and re-cultivating the network will take time, and the cost of setting up base stations will not drop too much in a short period of time. At present, China Radio and Television has launched multiple 5G trials at the 700MHz frequency, and it is probably possible to rely on its overall advantage to become a dark horse in the entire 5G market.

For the majority of consumers, the most popular 5G product is the 5G mobile phone. The price of 5G mobile phones is no longer high. You can buy a brand new 5G mobile phone at the price of 1K. The current 5G package is indeed more expensive than the current 4G, but compared with the era when 4G was just coming, the package fee is unprecedentedly low compared with the initial stage of 4G. For example, the 4G card I applied for in 2015 only had 2G of traffic for a 50 yuan package, and also had several G of exclusive traffic for Tencent's three major applications. Today's 5G package has 30G of traffic for 90 yuan, and the usage is synchronously compared with the early days of 4G. At this stage, the unit price of 5G traffic is still relatively low, and like 4G, the unit price will continue to decline as it matures and is used on a large scale.

However, in addition to the cost, 5G, as an infrastructure project, will bring unimaginable dividends after its completion. For example, Beijing Subway Line 1 has been in operation since the 1970s and is still the main subway line for passenger transportation in Beijing. Although the initial investment cost is huge, its social and economic benefits are no longer comparable to the cost of that year.

The mobile Internet, developed logistics, and convenient high-speed rail network that we enjoy today are all the result of astronomical investments, just like today's 5G construction. The investment in 4G gave birth to today's prosperous mobile Internet, and the strong construction that covers almost the entire country has enabled many places to enjoy the dividends of the Internet and boosted regional development. Today's live shopping, online transactions, QR code transactions, short videos, etc. have become possible.

As for the investment in infrastructure such as highways, a convenient highway network has been built, covering almost all county-level areas across the country. After the transaction, developed logistics has become possible, and the model of buying today and delivering tomorrow has become more and more common. It has also effectively driven the exchange of materials along the route and promoted economic development.

High-speed rail makes the flow of people more convenient. It only takes ten hours from Guangdong to Beijing from south to north. It is enough to show its convenience. High-speed rail also makes the cities along the line more closely connected, and the flow of materials and personnel along the high-speed rail is accelerated. It makes various regions more closely connected, such as the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, which have more intensive integrated and coordinated development.

As one of the new infrastructures, 5G is bound to have huge costs. According to China Mobile's budget, of the 170 billion yuan budget in 2020, 100 billion yuan will be invested in 5G construction. However, from the perspective of benefits, the current investment will bring various dividends to the entire society in the future. So even if there are shortcomings and various problems at this stage, if we jump out of the current stage and compare it with the various things in history, you will find that this is the process of historical development.

What will the future of 5G look like?

For me, I think that a 5G with a new backbone network and core layer is a perfect 5G, and the IPv6 system needs to be truly combined with 5G, and there is no need to go through various NATs to have a complete 5G system. In addition to the current application scenarios such as telemedicine, autonomous driving, or remote monitoring perception, and port operation. I think there may be more remote devices involved in the human body interaction stage, such as ultra-low latency interaction of MR/AR. At the current stage, various unmanned equipment at the docks of Shanghai Port have maintained efficient operation using 5G, but in addition to this, the development of 5G will not be just that simple. There will be more scenarios that we cannot foresee. Because of the limitations of the times and the environment, and because of the limitations of productivity, we cannot currently think out of the times to anticipate. Just as prehistoric humans could not imagine the form of human society today, no one has ever thought that it took less than half a century from the first generation of analog signal cellular networks to today's 5G.

Who would have thought of this?

As Engels pointed out in Dialectics of Nature: things develop in a spiral. So the real 5G generation may take some time. When we see its development seems to be stagnant, it may be a big leap in the next second.

It is often difficult for humans to foresee the future, and it is difficult for us to imagine what 5G applications will look like in the future. But we are also fortunate that we can develop with the development of the times and witness the progress of another generation of communications landing and maturing, and bearing fruit.

When we look back at the past, perhaps you will find that some of the scenarios I have listed now are nothing special, or not worth mentioning at all. I also hope that when we look back, all predictions and imaginations will not be worth mentioning in the future.