A heated debate among various parties: How far are we from a 5G hit?

[Original article from 51CTO.com] Remember that the direct cause of the Industrial Revolution was the invention of the steam engine by Watt, which led to a fundamental revolution in the economic and political systems of the budding capitalist countries? So what is the "Watt steam engine" of 5G? Now, countless eyes around the world are focused on the development of 5G in China, waiting for the emergence of a "hot product". 51CTO believes that this matter should be viewed dialectically. In addition to elaborating on his own views, the editor has also sorted out several major mainstream views in the market to help everyone look at 5G more objectively from different angles.

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51CTO’s opinion

For 5G, what is needed is the dual drive of innovation and demand. Technical standards may be able to achieve global consistency in the game, but the maturity of the market is still in a state of development and education. Perhaps in 2020, there may be so-called "explosive" and "killer" demands, but due to the wide impact of 5G on the entire economy, the greater value of a few "explosive" and "killer" is to point out the direction of each link in the industrial chain, and their real influence is not enough to form a comprehensive prosperity of 5G.

51CTO believes that there are three directions that need attention at this stage:

First, in the past, telecom operators were the main players in the construction of 2G, 3G, and 4G, but this approach has encountered considerable resistance in the 5G era. Since the high-cost, high-density, high-revenue model of 5G network construction is still unclear, the investment required for large-scale commercial use of 5G in the future is calculated in trillions, so a more innovative business model is needed to digest it. The traditional method of relying on operators to deploy first and then make profits is too stressful, and this requires suggestions from all parties in the industry;

Second, the application prospects of 5G in multiple industry markets such as driverless driving, Internet of Vehicles, and intelligent manufacturing are generally optimistic, but the commercial model is far from mature, and it will take at least 5-10 years to achieve large-scale development. 51CTO believes that in the future, 5G should still be based on personal connection and communication applications as the "explosion point" and gradually trigger industry applications. At this stage, the industry's value-added service providers should be guided by the policy environment to take the lead in creating profitable applications in the consumer market;

Third, 5G is a big game, involving a wide range of telecom operators, network equipment vendors, value-added service providers, smartphone manufacturers, individual users, corporate users, and industry users. The inherent thinking of "just changing a mobile phone" in the 4G era is no longer feasible. 5G has high requirements for the digital level of the industry and enterprise market. Therefore, on the one hand, the industry should accelerate the pace of digital transformation and improve the overall level of domestic informatization. On the other hand, it should also change its mindset and be fully prepared to welcome the arrival of 5G.

At this stage, we might as well be full of expectations for 5G "explosive products", start from now, and gradually improve the 5G ecosystem. When all industries continue to mature, 5G will surely open up a new and beautiful world.

Let’s follow the editor to take a look at the current views of various parties in the industry!

Optimistic and confident

The 5G communication network architecture design is application-driven, mainly aimed at larger bandwidth, lower latency and wide-area Internet of Things networks.

The changes brought by 5G are that communication technology can be deeply integrated with more industries and even play a role in the core production and operation processes of many industries in the national economy, such as enabling the transformation of automobile driving, optimizing industrial production processes, and accelerating the transformation from product sales to service models. These deep integration and changes with the industry are impossible to achieve with previous technologies that mainly focus on human-to-human communication. Therefore, the future of 5G is undoubtedly bright.

Long way to go

The frequency of "explosive products" is certainly not the higher the better. Changes that are too small are not enough to attract attention. In addition, from the perspective of terminal manufacturers' product innovation, too fast a research and development cycle means a significant increase in costs, and the quality of chip performance research and development is difficult to guarantee.

In addition, the target throughput rate provided by the large bandwidth of 5G is 10 times that of the 4G network, and the target latency requirement is also 10 times that of 4G. This places more stringent requirements on the chip's high-speed decoding capabilities and processing computing efficiency. The research and development cycle of higher-performance chips is about 3 to 4 years, so it will take time for 5G to mature.

Wait and See

Doubts about 5G have always existed, mainly focusing on the high cost and demand scenarios of 5G. In fact, it is simply a dilemma of "spending too much money" and "earning too little money."

Judging from the current progress, 5G standardization is indeed just getting started. Due to the high investment and the fact that current demand mainly comes from the continuation of connections between people, the demand for 5G's Internet of Things applications to change society is not yet obvious, the benefits are uncertain, and it will take a long time for 5G to be commercialized on a large scale.

[51CTO original article, please indicate the original author and source as 51CTO.com when reprinting on partner sites]