5G construction enters the fast lane, with base stations, applications, and terminals in full bloom

2020 is a critical year for my country's 5G construction. After the COVID-19 epidemic in my country was effectively controlled, my country's 5G construction has been fully accelerated and entered the fast lane. At present, there have been gratifying progress in 5G base station construction, application incubation and terminals.

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Operators continue to work hard to steadily build 5G base stations at the established pace

At the 2020 World Telecommunication and Information Society Day Conference held on May 17, senior executives of the three major operators disclosed their latest 5G network construction progress in their speeches.

As of the end of April this year, China Mobile has built nearly 140,000 5G base stations, and it is expected that the number of 5G base stations will exceed 300,000 by the end of the year. China Unicom and China Telecom have currently opened more than 100,000 5G base stations through a joint construction and sharing cooperation model. The two parties have opened 5G joint construction and sharing base stations in 31 provinces across the country, and have achieved 5G formal commercial use in more than 50 cities, striving to complete the construction and opening of 250,000 base stations across the country in the third quarter of 2020.

Judging from the current 5G base station construction status of the three operators, my country has built a total of about 240,000 5G base stations. Communications expert Chen Zhigang said: "From the perspective of base station construction progress, the overall quantity progress may be slightly behind the planned progress. After all, the impact of the COVID-19 epidemic at the beginning of this year cannot be underestimated. In the next few months, operators will work overtime to complete this year's overall 5G construction tasks."

Yang Guang, senior analyst in the wireless communications field at Strategy Analytics, is more optimistic about whether the annual target of 500,000 5G base stations can be successfully achieved. Yang Guang told reporters that this target may be exceeded.

The reporter learned that in addition to ranking first among operators in terms of the number of 5G base stations built, China Mobile's 5G user growth rate is also very fast. Jian Qin, deputy general manager of China Mobile, revealed that as of now, China Mobile's 5G network has covered 56 cities, and the number of 5G package customers has exceeded 50 million. In this regard, Chen Zhigang said: "From the scale of users, the depth and breadth of base station coverage, China Mobile has become the world's most worthy communications operator with the widest 5G network coverage and the largest scale of 5G customers." As the world's largest 4G operator with the most users, China Mobile is imperative to build a relatively large-scale 5G network. Yang Guang said: "I hope China Mobile can further demonstrate its innovative spirit and continue to make innovative breakthroughs in technology and business."

Unlike China Mobile, which is currently building 5G base stations on its own, China Telecom and China Unicom are jointly building and sharing both site and spectrum resources. This in-depth joint construction and sharing is the first of its kind in the world, and it is of great help to China Telecom and China Unicom in saving network construction costs, but at the same time, uncertainties are also increasing. "Joint construction and sharing is feasible from a technical point of view, but in actual implementation, both parties need to truly collaborate in management, which is not easy," said Chen Zhigang. Some industry insiders are concerned about whether joint construction and sharing will affect the innovation capabilities of China Telecom and China Unicom, which remains to be seen. Yang Guang said: "On the one hand, I hope that the joint construction and sharing of 5G networks will not affect the competition and innovation of both parties' businesses and services. On the other hand, I hope that the joint construction and sharing of networks will not affect the accumulation of new technologies, such as the subsequent evolution of 5G technology and research on 6G."

Zhejiang Mobile tests 5G messaging

5G applications may usher in a breakthrough

Since the three major operators jointly released the "5G Message White Paper" on April 8 this year, whether 5G messages can become the next outlet has become the focus of the industry. As a new upgrade of message products, the prospects of 5G messages are generally optimistic in the industry. Yang Guang believes: "5G messages are a beneficial exploration of operators, but the competition in the consumer market will be fierce, and there may be some gains in the enterprise market." Chen Zhigang also believes that the larger market for 5G messages lies in industry and government and enterprise customers. "Although the demand for personal SMS has been declining, the industry SMS market is on the rise. 5G messages can replace existing industry SMS, and use 5G messages to carry office application services. Its carrying capacity will be stronger than current applications. 5G messages are based on social relationships and have various new communication capabilities, including the ability to carry documents, pictures, images, and videos. In the industry scenario, the application scenario of 5G may be larger than the personal market." Chen Zhigang said.

On May 15, Zhejiang Mobile announced that it would open the 5G messaging service experience to all customers, and the 5G messaging service was first implemented in Zhejiang Province. According to Huang Gengsheng, chief expert of the Business Department of China Mobile Research Institute, the construction of China Mobile's core network and the construction of the 5G messaging center are divided into 8 regions, and Zhejiang Province is one of the 8 planned regions. China Mobile's 5G messaging construction is divided into two phases. First, the 5G messaging business process, technical level and platform specifications will be verified in Zhejiang and Guangdong regions, and then the construction will be rolled out in another 6 regions in stages after all aspects are mature. As one of the frontiers of China Mobile's 5G construction, Zhejiang Province is relatively active in innovative business and has inherent advantages in 5G messaging trials. Zhejiang Mobile has achieved that users can place orders for goods through 5G message replies and other operations without installing APP.

Has 5G messaging reached the stage where it can be implemented and promoted? Huang Gengsheng said that the verification process of 5G messaging has been basically completed, and Zhejiang Mobile's 5G messaging service will play a role in pilot verification. At present, China Mobile's overall 5G messaging service platform has not been fully established. In addition to the implementation of technical processes, the implementation of 5G messaging services also requires further construction in terms of business acceptance, including payment licenses. Therefore, it will take time for 5G messaging to be officially launched. China Mobile is currently carrying out unified planning and strives to realize the official commercial use of 5G messaging before the end of this year.

At present, 5G messages are in their infancy. Unlike previous products of operators, 5G messages have strong Internet attributes. Operators need to let users experience good usage experience, rather than complete functions. As far as user experience is concerned, the rhythm of product release is very critical.

There are a lot of spam messages in traditional messaging. As an upgrade of traditional messaging, 5G messaging is also an inevitable and important step to deal with spam messages. Huang Gengsheng said: "Operators have an unshirkable responsibility to monitor spam messages. In 5G messaging, there are more monitoring methods than before. 5G messaging will increase the user feedback mechanism, and recommend high-quality merchants to users through technologies such as AI and big data, avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach through two-way selection." At the same time, Huang Gengsheng also mentioned that 5G messaging should not aim to defeat WeChat. 5G messaging and WeChat have different user groups, and can be approached from different angles to provide services to users. 5G messaging is a capability module. In the 5G era, everything is connected. With the trend of mobile phones becoming PCs and PCs becoming mobile, 5G messaging will first be implemented on mobile terminals, and will also run on TVs and car systems in the future.

5G terminal "debate" The first 5G terminal of radio and television will be released soon

After a slightly difficult first quarter, my country's 5G terminal market is gradually recovering. According to a report from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, domestic smartphone shipments in April this year reached 41.728 million units, marking the first time in 27 months that monthly smartphone shipments in the domestic market have exceeded 40 million units. The last time was in December 2017, when monthly shipments were 42.612 million units. Thanks to strong consumer demand for 5G smartphones, domestic smartphone sales have continued to rise recently.

Not only are traditional terminal companies making all-out efforts to layout the market, but "latecomers" are also actively planning. On May 16, China Radio and Television Network Co., Ltd. announced that the industry chain of China Radio and Television's communications equipment supporting medium and low frequency bands is becoming increasingly mature, and the productization of medium and low frequency band mobile phones of some terminal equipment manufacturers has entered the testing and verification stage. China Radio and Television's 5G mobile terminals will soon be released to the communications market. On May 17, ZTE announced that its first ZTE 5G mobile phone supporting the four major domestic operators will be released on June 1. This phone supports the 700MHz frequency band and is also the first mobile phone on the market that supports the 5G frequency band of radio and television. Chen Zhigang said: "There is no doubt that the launch of China Radio and Television's first 5G mobile phone is of great significance to its 5G construction and development."

The 700MHz frequency band is known as the "golden frequency band" because of its advantages such as low propagation loss, wide coverage, strong penetration, and low networking cost. Although China Radio and Television holds the trump card of 700MHz, it has not yet been determined whether it can be used for 5G networks. Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a document allowing radio and television to use the 703-733MHz/758-788MHz frequency band to deploy 5G networks in batches across the country, and the ownership of 5G in the 700MHz frequency band has been settled.

In addition to the upcoming release of 5G terminals, China Radio and Television recently made the first 5G SA VoNR cross-regional voice call. With the support of China Radio and Television, Zhejiang Wasu successfully launched the Hangzhou Radio and Television 5G test network, and jointly with Beijing Gehua Cable, Shanghai Oriental Cable and Huawei made the first 5G SA VoNR long-distance audio and video high-definition call service. 5G SA network is very important for both consumer business and government business. "The first 5G SA call shows that China Radio and Television's entire network construction is proceeding in an orderly manner as planned. It is very important for China Radio and Television's 5G business innovation and can be said to be of milestone significance." Yang Guang told reporters.

Obviously, China Radio and Television's 5G construction is moving forward in exploration. Zeng Qingjun, deputy general manager of China Radio and Television, said that China Radio and Television will strive to basically achieve the goal of China Radio and Television's 5G network covering the whole country by the end of 2021. China Radio and Television is an emerging force in the mobile market. The industry hopes that it can enter the market as soon as possible to provide services and effectively utilize the 700MHz golden frequency band. Moreover, after announcing on May 20 that it will join hands with China Mobile, radio and television is bound to usher in a new period of development opportunities.