In addition to base stations, what else should major cities pay attention to in 5G construction?

It has been a year since 5G was officially put into commercial use in my country on June 6, 2019. A detailed review of the development of the 5G industry over the past year shows that in the first year of 5G commercialization, China's 5G industry has made great progress in network construction, policy support, market competition and application innovation, and has subtly led the global information and communication construction climax.

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Overall, in terms of network construction, more than 250,000 5G base stations have been built nationwide, 130 5G mobile phones have obtained network sales licenses, and the number of 5G terminal connections has exceeded 36 million. As of the end of May, the cumulative shipments of 5G mobile phones in China reached 59.85 million units, and it is expected to reach 180 million units by the end of the year. Under the favorable situation of accelerated development of 5G, domestic mobile phone manufacturers such as Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus, and Honor have released 5G mobile phones, which has greatly promoted the replacement trend of 5G mobile phones in China.

This year's 5G construction is still a major focus of social and economic construction. On March 24, 2020, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a "Notice on Promoting the Accelerated Development of 5G", which clearly pointed out that China will accelerate the construction of networks in major cities and gradually extend coverage to key counties and towns with conditions; at the same time, basic telecommunications companies are encouraged to promote 5G terminal consumption and accelerate user migration to 5G through package upgrade discounts, credit purchases and other measures.

Local plans are being rolled out. The Beijing 5G Industry Development Action Plan (2019-2022) states that by 2022, 5G network coverage will be achieved in the capital's core functional area, the city's sub-center, important functional areas, and important places. The Shanghai Municipal People's Government's Implementation Opinions on Accelerating the Construction and Application of 5G Networks in the City states that this year, a total of 20,000 5G base stations will be built to achieve city-wide coverage.

In the past month, Henan Province said that it plans to complete 5G investment of 10.45 billion yuan this year, build 29,000 new 5G base stations, and achieve full coverage of county towns and above by the end of the year. Guizhou Province said that it will accelerate the construction of 5G networks this year, strive to build 20,000 5G base stations, and achieve 5G coverage in all counties. Hunan Province plans to build more than 20,000 5G base stations in 2020, and achieve continuous 5G network coverage in the main urban areas of 14 cities and prefectures and the core urban areas of key county towns by the end of the year. In addition, Jiangsu, Yunnan, Hainan and other places have also launched relevant deployments.

It is not difficult to find from the planning documents issued by various places that the current major cities in China have already placed the focus of 5G construction on base stations. It should be noted that in addition to base stations, the construction of supporting communication signal transmission systems, intelligent data transmission and receiving devices, data information management platforms, etc. is also very important. At the same time, handling the relationship between 5G network access protocols and application scope, the boundaries between military and civilian frequency bands, and technology sharing and core technology protection will help 5G flourish in various fields.

Judging from the layout of the three major operators, as of the end of May, China Mobile has built 140,000 5G base stations, and will complete the construction of 300,000 base stations by the end of this year, covering more than 340 cities at the prefecture level and above. China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and shared more than 100,000 5G base stations, and the two parties plan to complete the annual construction task of 250,000 base stations one quarter ahead of schedule.

At present, the coordination and power consumption of 5G base stations are the main difficulties in construction. The unconditional and free opening of public facilities resources for 5G will also be a major reason for the smooth promotion of 5G in various fields. As far as 5G hardware devices are concerned, switches, routers (5G + cloud computing dual drive), optical communications, etc. will become the focus of competition among major manufacturers. In the process of continuous deepening of 5G commercialization, in addition to base stations, corresponding optical communications, remote signal receiving systems and smart devices are also expected to be fully launched in various industries.