Officials have spoken! 5G network full coverage is too far away, and it will take another five to eight years to achieve

Although China's 4G network is not the best in the world, considering China's large area and large population, the current coverage and speed have reached this level, making it one of the most advanced countries in the world in terms of 4G coverage. Currently, China's 4G network coverage rate exceeds 95%, which is a complete victory at least compared to the United States, which has a similar land area.

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However, what Chinese users are concerned about now is not the 4G network coverage, but the popular 5G network. After all, the number of 5G mobile phone users is growing rapidly. After the slow transition from 4G to 5G in the second half of last year, 5G mobile phones are becoming popular at an unprecedented rate this year. In addition to the new products launched by manufacturers, users are also very active in upgrading to new ones.

Data released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology shows that in April alone, domestic shipments of 5G mobile phones reached 16.382 million units, accounting for 39.3% of mobile phone shipments. From January to April this year, domestic shipments of 5G mobile phones totaled 30.441 million units, accounting for 33.6% of mobile phone shipments. At the same time, the number of new 5G mobile phones has reached 65, which means that the trend of 5G popularization has officially begun.

Now that the number of 5G mobile phone users has increased, what about the number of 5G package users? Previously, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced data as of the end of March. As of the end of March, the scale of 5G package users exceeded 50 million, including 31.723 million for China Mobile and 16.61 million for China Telecom. China Unicom has not announced the number, which may be only a few million.

On May 17, China Mobile announced its interim achievements at the Ecosystem Partner Conference, building 124,000 5G base stations covering 56 cities, and the number of 5G package users has exceeded 50 million. At the same time, China Mobile also emphasized that it will strive to achieve more than 100 million 5G users by the end of 2020.

The number of users of 5G mobile phones and 5G packages have both increased. For users, the most concern is undoubtedly the coverage of the 5G network. Because if you want users to pay for the 5G network, you have to rely on service. At present, many areas cannot connect to the 5G network at all. The reason is naturally related to the number of 5G base stations. At this stage, there are only about 200,000 5G base stations in the country.

In comparison, there are about 5 million 4G base stations in the country, which is why there is such a coverage rate. However, Zhang Yunyong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and general manager of China Unicom's product center, said in an interview recently that the scale of 5G network construction is 2-3 times larger than that of 4G, and the cost is also high. If you want to achieve a network coverage comparable to 4G, you need 10 million units and at least 2 trillion yuan will be invested.

At the same time, he also revealed that the three major operators built more than 100,000 5G base stations last year, and a total of 1 million 5G base stations will be built this year. If it continues to develop at this speed, it will take about five to eight years for 5G to basically meet the basic coverage needs such as deep coverage in large cities, coverage of key scenarios in prefecture-level cities, and seamless access for enterprises.

From this point, we can see that although the 5G mobile phones on the market now look very good and the number of users of 5G packages offered by the three major operators is also very impressive, the full coverage of 5G networks is still very far away from us. Perhaps with the recent rise of 5G new infrastructure, the pace of construction will be faster, but 5G base stations still face many problems that need to be solved.

One is the cost issue mentioned above, which will cost at least 2 trillion RMB, and the other is the power consumption issue. It has been reported that the power consumption of 5G base stations is 3-4 times that of 4G base stations. It can be seen that the electricity cost is also a considerable expense. Therefore, 5G construction poses a huge challenge to operators!