The challenges of 5G have just begun

The COVID-19 outbreak that has ravaged the world has been gradually brought under control in China. As the epidemic risk level in various regions has been reduced, the resumption of work and production has been fully accelerated. 5G, which has played a major role in epidemic prevention and control, has been unanimously recognized by the whole society. Since April, the construction of 5G in China has been fully launched. First, the three major operators' 5GSA Phase II bidding orders were landed, and then the construction of other 5G projects was also carried out in full swing, such as the 5G messages jointly launched by the three major operators, and the first MEC commercial-scale network in the country launched by China Unicom. In addition, local governments have actively introduced relevant 5G development promotion policies, requiring operators to achieve 5G coverage at the county level by the end of this year. All these news make people feel that China's 5G development will enter a climax.

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This year will be a critical time node for the large-scale construction of 5G in my country. Data shows that as of February this year, the number of 5G base stations in my country has reached 160,000, and the scale of 5G users has exceeded 13 million. By the end of this year, the three major operators will build more than 550,000 5G base stations. Judging from the scale of 5G networks and the depth and breadth of applications, my country's 5G development process is very fast. Indeed, compared with other parts of the world, China's 5G development is in good momentum. From the perspective of network technology, we are gradually starting to deploy large-scale SA networks across the country, while Japan and South Korea are still at NSA; from the perspective of business applications, China is at the forefront of the world, 5G+Industrial Internet, 5G+VR, 5G+Smart Medical, almost all walks of life are actively embracing 5G. Previously, the three major operators launched a 5G+4K live cloud video service on Mount Everest, which is a good proof.

But while we applaud the speed of China's 5G construction and development, we must remain calm and realize that 5G development still faces many difficulties and challenges. It can even be said that the challenges of 5G have just begun.

Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, recently said when talking about the development of 5G in the "new infrastructure" that 5G is the first choice of the "new infrastructure" and is entrusted with the important task of responding to the economic downward pressure brought by the epidemic and providing a new engine for high-quality and sustainable economic development. "For China's 5G, the 'new infrastructure' is not only a construction project, but also a continuation of technological innovation, and a real test of whether China's 5G can achieve leadership." Wu Hequan clearly pointed out that the 5G "new infrastructure" will bring five major challenges in terms of technology, operation and maintenance, products, market and security maturity.

Wang Zhiqin, Vice President of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Head of the IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, and Secretary-General of the 5G Application Industry Array, believes that 5G faces challenges in three major areas: network slicing, industry virtual private networks, and network security. For example, on the issue of end-to-end network slicing standards, both internationally and domestically, the end-to-end work of network slicing urgently needs to be connected in terms of functional architecture and management architecture. At the same time, in the cross-domain process, not only are the end-to-end slicing capability standards not yet connected, but there are also problems such as insufficient automatic deployment capabilities of network slicing.

This is the view of authoritative experts in the field of 5G in China. So what do the operators who are specifically engaged in 5G operation think? Recently, the author has communicated with relevant personnel of the three major operators, and everyone's views tend to be consistent. For example, relevant personnel of China Telecom said that the 5GSA standard is still changing dynamically, and the "three highs" problems in 5G construction, as well as various problems such as terminals and markets, are all challenges faced in the development of 5G. China Telecom is also actively solving these problems through measures such as co-construction and sharing, and ecological construction to promote the development of 5G. China Unicom has just announced the launch of the world's first MEC-scale commercial network to promote the development of 5G edge applications, but there are still many problems to be solved for the commercial use of MEC.

Of course, the development of any new thing will face huge challenges. It is necessary to solve problems in development and seek development in problems. We are actively responding to the challenges facing the development of 5G. In response to the challenges of these problems, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued or is about to issue many policies. Recently, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the "Notice on Promoting the Accelerated Development of 5G", proposing to organize research and pilot projects on 5G industry virtual private networks to open up key links such as standards, technologies, applications, and deployment. At the same time, the industry is also taking active actions to carry out practical pilot projects from multiple dimensions such as technology, product solutions, and applications. At present, all walks of life in China have taken action and actively embraced 5G.

Of course, in the end, the author would like to make a special suggestion that in the process of promoting 5G construction, in addition to issuing relevant policies and setting goals for operators, local governments also need to put out real money to help operators accelerate the pace of 5G network construction.