Everyone is waiting for 5G, what is 5G waiting for?

At the end of 2013, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued 4G licenses. Now that we are on the eve of the 5G explosion, looking back at five years ago, the situation seems to be exactly the same: news reports are everywhere, street billboards also have eye-catching slogans, and even the old man who changed his mobile phone was asking the counter, "Does this phone support 5G?"

Compared with the 4G era, faced with high bandwidth, low latency, and the ultra-fast experience of downloading a blockbuster in 3 seconds, most consumers still maintain an active attitude of exploration. However, with the rise of the Internet over 4G, the voices and reports of many experts calling for a rational view of 5G have also been amplified.

As the underlying technology of the communications industry, some people have summarized the development trends of the first four generations of technology and concluded that the wireless communications industry will fail whenever it comes to single orders. This has become a side profile of the great discussion before the commercial use of 5G.

What are we waiting for before communication technology becomes popular? Business perfection? National policy? Or the research on carcinogenic radiation that is rarely mentioned by the domestic media?

Will wireless communications fail every time they are sold?

The basic rule of the communications industry is that there will be a change every 10 years. Each technological change deepens the complexity of information transmission, thus affecting the changes in each generation of our mobile phones.

• In the 1G era, people were able to use mobile phones to transmit analog voice signals, and at the same time, the networking structure of cellular mobile networks was established.
• In the 2G era, scientists successfully converted analog signals into digital signals, allowing text to be transmitted between mobile phones in the form of text messages.
• In the 3G era, wireless network bandwidth has been enhanced, and online web pages and music transmission have become popular. Many old users still remember that the signal display on their mobile phones was distinguished by letters such as H (3G)/E (2.5G)/G (2G).
• In the 4G era, with the support of greater bandwidth, sound, images and text can be transmitted simultaneously, allowing communication anytime and anywhere. This has made a large number of Internet apps popular.
• Dr. Wu Jun believes that in the 5G era, it is not just the Internet of Things, but the Internet of Everything. It is conservatively estimated that there will be 500 to 1 trillion devices connected to the Internet, which is 1-2 orders of magnitude higher than the current 5 billion devices.

It seems to be a routine upgrade every 10 years, but there are historical reasons why it always fails in China.

In November 1987, Guangdong built a 900MHz analog mobile communication network, opening the era of mobile phones in China. The 1G era was accompanied by the brief glory of "Big Brother", and analog mobile phones were replaced by a new generation of digital mobile phones.

After the 2G network was established in 1993, the three major operators enjoyed a stable life for 16 years. However, when my country officially commercialized 3G in 2009, it was already 10 years later than the issuance of the first 3G license in the world in 1999. At the end of 2013, not long after the 3G license was issued, we began to embrace 4G.

The 1G era came to an end in a hurry, and 3G technology lasted only five years in China from commercial use to replacement. During this period, China Mobile spent 200 billion yuan to "actively" take the blame for TD-CDMA technology, which became the worst hit area for signal quality, and also gave the public the impression that 3G was not powerful enough.

On the other hand, many Asian and European countries such as South Korea, Singapore, Norway, and the Netherlands have not said that they will fail every time they adopt a single technology. Each generation of technology has been smoothly transitioned. Facts have proved that the failure of communication technology every time it adopts a single technology is not a universal law of the communication industry, but a unique national condition of my country.

Learning from the 4G failure

In addition to the historical lessons of mobile communication technology, many companies have also failed to grasp the industry trends.

After the 4G licenses were officially issued, like most technology portals, NetEase Technology Channel also launched a special topic called "4G is Coming", predicting that emerging applications in the 4G era will include five industries: news feedback, smart transportation, Internet of Vehicles, smart security and smart home.

Looking back today, we find that many of the smart solutions originally conceived are now facing considerable challenges, both in terms of investment trends and popularity. Among them, smart homes, smart wearables and virtual reality are the ones that have failed.

Strangely enough, in the early days of 3G development, operators promoted video calls but failed, and only QQ continued to flourish on mobile phones. In the 4G era, terms such as LBS, SOLOMO, and O2O were invented one after another, and e-commerce, food delivery, and shared travel are booming, which seems to be another interpretation of "failure every time you order."

5G is about to be officially commercialized. Where will the next killer application appear?

There are as many as a dozen usage scenarios in China Mobile's 5G promotional video, including equipment inspection, panoramic live broadcast, distance education brought by virtual reality technology, as well as 8K video, smart security, smart medical care, autonomous driving, drones, etc. Although it seems lively, no feasible investment return model has been found.

New Scientist magazine recently published an article called "Phoning in the Future". The core point of the article is that, at present, 5G can play a major role in the commercial field, not in civilian use. In other words, 5G is still far from the lives of ordinary people.

In 2018, Huawei's rotating CEO Xu Zhijun said at the Huawei Global Analyst Conference, "Compared with 4G, 5G has high performance, low latency and high connectivity, and the rest is not noticeable. In the past few years, the outside world has deified 5G." His words reveal the implication of using an anti-aircraft gun to kill a mosquito.

Xu Zhijun also said that most consumers will not notice the benefits of the new technology, and it will be difficult for operators to make money from it. New Scientist magazine also pointed out in a column in March: 4G can fully meet the daily needs of ordinary users, and there is no need to spend money to buy 5G services.

Waiting for 5G

In addition to the lack of killer applications, even operators do not seem to recommend buying 5G phones now. China Mobile's official account published an article in March titled "When is the best time to buy a 5G phone?" The article suggested that it is not recommended to buy in 2019, but it can be considered in 2020, and 2021-2022 will be the best time to buy a 5G phone.

First of all, the 5G standard. After the 5G standard was announced in June 2018, 3GPP announced at the end of 2018 that the overall progress would be delayed by 3 months (R15 Late Drop, R16 Delayed). Although it does not affect the networking progress of various countries, it will involve the improvement of multiple scenarios such as Internet of Vehicles, 5G satellite access, local network support, terminal location services, as well as network security and application expansion details, thus affecting the overall deployment progress of 5G networks.

The second problem is whether consumers will buy it. The wool comes from the sheep, and with the current high prices of 5G terminals and rates, it is difficult to impress the general public to pay for it.

Take the price quoted by AT&T, a US operator, for example. The monthly package costs 70 US dollars, nearly 500 RMB, and there is a 15G traffic limit. 4G not only has unlimited traffic, but also costs only a few dozen RMB per month. South Korea, which was the first to achieve commercial use, also charges 300+ to 500+ RMB for 5G.

Unlike foreign countries, domestic operators may be able to accelerate the pace of 5G fee reduction, which comes from the two-way promotion of the market and policies.

As for 5G terminals, the official price of Samsung Galaxy S10 5G is 1,390,000 won (RMB 8,000+), which is the price of the flagship model. Models supporting 5G in the second half of the year also include Huawei Mate series, Samsung Note series, Xiaomi Mix 3 5G and OPPO reno, etc. Coinciding with the first year of foldable screens, the outside world generally predicts that the average price of 5G mobile phones will be higher than RMB 4,000+.

The key to whether 5G can be quickly popularized still lies with the operators.

The current disadvantage of 5G base stations is that their coverage area is smaller than that of 4G, so they have higher requirements for infrastructure and hardware.

According to statistics, from 2013 to 2020, China's three major operators' investment in 4G networks is estimated to reach 117 billion US dollars, and investment in 5G is expected to increase by 48% over 4G, reaching nearly 180 billion US dollars.

By the end of 2017, China Mobile had 1.87 million 4G base stations nationwide, covering 99% of the country's population. China Unicom and China Telecom had 850,000 and 1.17 million 4G base stations respectively during the same period. Together with other supporting facilities, the three major operators' 4G network construction is at least 800 billion yuan.

All these factors make it difficult for operators to give up 4G and embrace 5G. No wonder, in an interview, a person from an operator said, "The three major operators have an ambiguous attitude towards 5G construction. They look forward to the application of new technologies, but at the same time they are worried that they will not be able to keep up. They are afraid of being overtaken by competitors, and at the same time, the investment pressure is too great, and the cost of 4G has not yet been recovered."

On the one hand, they need to make profits, and on the other hand, they need to build a good national information infrastructure. The profit margins of operators are getting smaller and smaller.

In addition, the gradually rising trade barriers around the world have also hindered the development of 5G to a certain extent.

Guo Zhengbiao, president of Nanjing Shiyu Tianji Communication Technology Co., Ltd., said, "Huawei is currently the only supplier in the world that can provide complete 5G communication services." The Five Eyes Alliance's exclusion of Huawei from the 5G bidding has led to a surge in costs, and the speed of network construction is bound to slow down.

The road ahead is long, and 5G may face public pressure

5G networking may also face a social challenge in China: radiation.

"New Scientist" mentioned in the article that studies have shown that 5G radiation can cause harm to human health, such as damaging the eyes and threatening the immune system. At the same time, it can also harm the health of animals and plants and even damage the atmosphere.

5G base stations emit "radio frequency radiation", which is classified as a potential 2B carcinogen by research agencies within the World Health Organization.

A 10-year research report costing $25 million and was conducted by the FDA pointed out that when a male mouse was exposed to this radiation for 9 hours a day for two consecutive years, rare tumors grew in the mouse's brain and heart, and even its DNA was damaged.

Another study showed that 5G millimeter wave radiation can cause damage to the eyes and immune system. An experiment at the Institute of Medicine, Kanazawa Medical University, showed that 60-gigahertz millimeter wave antennas can cause thermal damage to rabbits' eyes, which is medical proof.

5G radiation also has an impact on plants. A 2010 study showed that leaves of poplar seedlings exposed to 5G radiation showed necrosis symptoms; another study in Armenia showed that low-intensity millimeter waves damaged the stress response of wheat seedling cells, which would affect the normal growth of wheat seedlings. In other words, 5G radiation may contaminate human food sources.

While scientists are trying to prove the harmfulness of radio frequency radiation, some research institutions have provided negative evidence.

Also in 2010, an international research institute conducted a retrospective case-control study called Interphone, which attempted to study whether the use of mobile phones in adults was associated with head and neck diseases. The study involved 2,708 patients with glioma and 7,658 patients with meningioma, as well as 7,658 controls.

The results showed that those who used mobile phones for more than 10 years did not have an increased risk of glioma and meningioma.

In April 2011, Indian oncologist Siddhartha Mukherjee, who won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, also mentioned in his award-winning work that in the past 20 years, there has been almost no evidence to prove that the occurrence of brain tumors is related to mobile phone use.

For example, in the FDA experiment mentioned above, the radiation dose used was more than 50 times that of daily life. According to current experimental evidence, the current radiation value of mobile phones is still acceptable for public safety.

"Even though the vast majority of adults use cell phones frequently every day, we have not seen an increase in cases of brain tumors," Jeffrey Shuren, director of the FDA's Center for Devices and Radiological Health, wrote.

Therefore, the problem with 5G construction is whether base station radio frequencies or even mobile phones have carcinogenic radiation. After several years of research, it is still difficult to conclude. This means that operators will face layers of obstacles when persuading the public to accept the construction of base stations in certain areas.

It was revealed in March this year that some Finnish residents were trying to prevent the expansion of 5G base stations due to concerns about the electromagnetic radiation from 5G base stations, and received the support of more than 2,300 local residents, citing the electromagnetic radiation from 5G base stations as the reason.

They believe that the density of 5G base stations will be higher than that of current 4G base stations, and residents will be more likely to be exposed to potentially dangerous electromagnetic radiation, which will threaten human health.

Summarize

The new generation of communication technology that drives the Internet of Everything has rich but unproven business prospects, but even if this is an Internet revolution that is taking place, it will take shape slowly, and we expect it to be much slower than the speed of 4G network construction.

The slow-down trend of 5G networking will face greater cost pressures, and most consumers will not pay 400 to 500 yuan a month for 8K live broadcast or VR in the short term. Therefore, 5G needs to quickly find a suitable profit model in the commercial field, or develop killer applications.

At the same time, 5G technology, which consumes more power, is also facing social concerns such as "radiation causes cancer" and may evolve into the next major social discussion about radiation, thereby slowing down the progress of 5G network deployment.

Driven by both bright prospects and practical obstacles, whether 5G can successfully assume the communication foundation for the next 10 years, thus achieving the great transcendence of "3G following, 4G running side by side, and 5G leading" in China, is still an unknown conclusion that requires multi-party game. China, Finland, Japan and other countries have already started to develop 6G. I hope that 5G will not repeat the mistake of failing when it meets a single order.