The first year has come but 5G commercialization is still slow and is constrained by three major factors

2019 is recognized as the first year of 5G, and operators in South Korea and the United States have already launched 5G commercial networks. Although the commercialization of 5G networks has gradually started around the world, it is still constrained by three major issues: technology maturity, business model, and network architecture and operation and maintenance.

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Standards are still being refined

The official commercialization of 5G networks first requires a complete standard definition. The first complete 5G standard was officially released at the 3GPP conference on June 13, 2018. The 5G standard networking architecture is divided into two categories: non-standalone networking (NSA) and standalone networking (SA).

So far, only the non-standalone (NSA) and standalone (SA) standards have been frozen, while the ultra-low latency standard and the massive IoT connection standard have been frozen. It can be seen that 5G networks are not perfect in the application of ultra-low latency and IoT. In other words, mobile broadband application scenarios are ready, but ultra-low latency and massive IoT scenarios still do not have commercial standards.

The business model is in the exploration stage

It is said that 4G changes life, and 5G changes society. Now all walks of life are talking about 5G applications, which shows that the 5G network has been highly anticipated by the industry and society. 5G not only changes the personal Internet experience, but also brings about industrial changes opened by the Internet of Everything.

But for operators, how to make money from 5G networks is a big problem. First of all, in order to officially commercialize 5G networks, operators need to build base stations on a large scale. The density of 5G base stations is twice that of 4G to achieve the coverage level of existing 4G networks. In addition, operators also need to build a large number of edge computing centers to meet the low-latency Internet experience of 5G networks.

How can operators make money from pipelines that have been built at great expense? With the advancement of the policy of increasing speed and reducing fees, it is almost impossible for operators to make a lot of money from traffic services. The existing business model of mobile networks can no longer support the sustainable development of 5G. Operators are exploring various charging models for individual users and industry users, and for different application scenarios. After all, operators must not only recover the cost of pipeline construction, but also continue to make profits.

Network operation and maintenance is under great pressure

After the official commercialization of 5G networks, massive amounts of data and connections have flooded into operators' existing networks, and traditional operation and maintenance methods can no longer support them. Whether it is SDN, NFV, or artificial intelligence technology, they are gradually being implanted into operators' existing network architectures to achieve automated and intelligent network operation and maintenance. This type of network operation and maintenance has become a new form of network operation and maintenance in the 5G era.

However, both manufacturers and operators are working together to explore automated 5G network operation and maintenance methods, and the transformation of network operation and maintenance automation and intelligence has just begun. Intent-based intelligent networks and fully automated intelligent operation and maintenance without operation are still far from truly large-scale commercial use.

Conclusion

This year's World Telecommunication Day event was originally expected to see the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issue 5G network commercial licenses to the three major operators. However, the three mountains mentioned in the article have not been removed yet, and operators and major manufacturers are doing their best to realize the official commercial use of 5G networks as soon as possible. Perhaps the issuance of 5G licenses will become a gift to the 70th anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China.