5G base stations are shut down regularly every day. Even the richest operators cannot afford the electricity bills for 5G base stations.

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This article is reprinted from the WeChat public account "Sad White Rhino", the author is sad white rhino. Please contact the sad white rhino public account to reprint this article.

With the full commercial use of 5G, a "big energy consumer", electricity bills have become one of the largest operating costs for operators. Without exception, the three major operators are actively trying various ways to reduce electricity bills.

Since entering the 5G era, the beautiful scenes envisioned have not yet appeared, but an unexpected dilemma has first erupted - operators are overwhelmed by the expensive electricity bills of 5G base stations.

Recently, China Unicom, based on the distribution of 5G users and terminal usage, has scheduled deep sleep functions in the no-load state for three different base station radio frequency unit devices (AAU) that have been connected to the network at different time periods, in order to achieve the goal of intelligent base station equipment energy consumption control.

Simply put, it means shutting down 5G base stations at a fixed time every day (21:00-9:00 the next day) to reduce energy consumption and save electricity bills.

Some people may wonder why the three major domestic operators, with their ability to earn 500 to 600 million yuan a day, would care so much about electricity bills?

In fact, operators have not had a good time in recent years, with revenue and profits in a state of stagflation or even decline. Since increasing revenue is not an option, they can only find ways to save money. Currently, with the full commercial use of 5G, a "big energy consumer", electricity bills have become one of the largest operating costs for operators. Without exception, the three major operators are actively trying every possible way to reduce electricity bills.

According to data from China Unicom's field trials in Luoyang, when the AAU deep sleep function is turned on all the time under no-load conditions, a single A9611 AAU will save about 6.09 yuan in electricity bills per day, a single A96331A AAU will save about 5.61 yuan in electricity bills per day, and a single A9622A AAU will save 3.11 yuan in electricity bills per day.

A 5G base station is generally equipped with 3 AUUs, so each base station can save an average of 15 yuan per day. Currently, more than 200,000 base stations can save 3 million yuan per day, and nearly 1.2 billion yuan per year! This is still the current status. If we calculate based on the construction volume of 1 million 5G base stations by the end of the year, that would save 6 billion yuan! Think about it, China Unicom’s annual net profit is only over 10 billion.

Therefore, it is really a last resort for operators to shut down 5G base stations regularly to save electricity costs!

I think there are two reasons for this "dilemma":

First, 5G construction was rushed, ignoring the need for regular services

5G technology is not yet mature, the equipment is not yet perfect, there is often no demand, there is no application in the industry, and base stations consume huge amounts of energy. These cannot stop the rapid development of 5G in China.

On the other hand, huge amounts of money have been invested in building base stations, but in many places, the 4G network load is not high, there are not many 5G phones, and there is not much business. The built base stations are idle, and the income is not enough to pay the electricity bill.

If equipment depreciation is taken into account, operators will undoubtedly suffer huge losses in the 5G business, and there is no sign of a turning point in the situation in the short term, because you can't rely on users' traffic to support a 5G network. This is unrealistic and goes against the original intention of 5G construction.

Second, the development of 5G industry applications lags behind, rendering 5G useless.

5G technology can fully play its role mainly in the To B field. The construction of 5G networks should follow the market law of building on demand and be built in segments and stages according to the industrial needs of vertical industries.

Today's 5G network construction still replicates the 4G experience in serving consumer users, pursuing large-scale one-time continuous coverage, emptying the pockets of operators to provide transfusions to specific companies (such as Huawei), and boosting GDP in the short term by increasing investment. However, the market consequences are bound to be low user utilization, idle equipment, and high operation and maintenance costs.

As a result, the financial situation of operators has deteriorated, and they have to pass on costs to downstream suppliers to a greater extent in order to lower costs. This has intensified vicious competition in the industry and damaged the long-term healthy development of the communications industry.

How can we break the impasse in the future? It is still unclear at present. Perhaps with the popularization of 5G networks, new technologies will gradually lead to the natural emergence of new applications, and then everything will be solved. However, no one can tell when this day will come.