Will 5G phones turn back to 4G? Possibly

At the press conference of the State Council Information Office, Miao Wei, Minister of Industry and Information Technology, said that he has not yet used a 5G mobile phone and is still using a 4G mobile phone. He said that for most users, 4G mobile phones are sufficient.

In March 2010, when the 3G era just arrived, the then Minister of Industry and Information Technology also said that he was still using a 2G mobile phone and had not upgraded to 3G. He also explained that he usually used his mobile phone only for making calls and had no more energy for other functions and uses. He also said, "Because this phone is still very useful, I am reluctant to replace it." But he said that he hoped that consumers would be familiar with 3G and use 3G to make their lives more colorful.

The views expressed by the two ministers of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on the new communications era are somewhat similar, but not completely the same. This also shows once again that young talents are the main force in the information age. Even the industry leaders have not yet felt the experience brought by the communications upgrade.

However, this is only a temporary phenomenon. After retiring, Li Yizhong was a guest at the People's Daily Strong Country Forum. When talking about his life after retirement, he said that he now has plenty of time, has a 3G mobile phone, and can surf the Internet every day.

This time, in the speech of the Minister of Industry and Information Technology, whether he used a 5G mobile phone did not cause much controversy, but another sentence triggered a heated debate inside and outside the industry.

Miao Wei said that most of the 5G mobile phones commercially released in the Chinese market are non-independent. To truly demonstrate 5G performance, you have to rely on independent 5G networks, not NSA based on the 4G core network, that is, non-independent 5G products. Currently, only Huawei phones are compatible with NSA and SA.

Regarding 5G construction, Miao Wei said that next year, large-scale investment in independent 5G networks will be made. Miao Wei said that 80% of the real application scenarios should be used in communication between things, such as industrial Internet, Internet of Vehicles, telemedicine and other fields.

The problem is already very clear. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is promoting the construction of independent networking (SA) 5G. The current NSA is only a transitional state, and the time is next year.

Previously, China Mobile said that by next year, mobile phones with only independent networking functions will not be able to access the network. China Telecom also made it clear that independent networking will be its network construction goal. China Telecom and China Unicom have announced that they will jointly build and share 5G networks, which means that China Unicom will also independently build a network.

We can draw the following conclusions:

• Whether it is NSA or SA, they are all real 5G, and the debate over real and fake 5G can be put to rest, but real 5G is not the same. If SA's 5G is 100 degrees, then NSA is 30 degrees, the water is just warm.
• Although operators will build a certain number of NSA networks in 2019, this is a transitional state, and SA will be the main construction in 2020.
• In the future, not all 5G base stations will support NSA. In other words, 5G mobile phones that only support NSA may not be able to use base stations built by operators after 2020.
• Current 5G mobile phones that only support NSA networks will not be able to fully access 5G networks in future 5G networks. They will fall back to 4G networks when only SA networks are supported.
• All mobile phones will support NSA, but not all mobile phones will support SA. Users need to make reasonable choices based on their own needs and not be swayed by the hype of some manufacturers.
• Don’t say that 5G is useless, because these people said the same thing in the 3G and 4G era.
• SA is the general trend, also internationally. Otherwise, 5G will really have little significance. Therefore, don’t believe what some manufacturers say that SA is unnecessary.