What is missing from licensing 5G for commercial use?

On February 20, South Korea announced the official commercial use of 5G in early December 2018. In order to seize the gimmick of being the world's leading 5G operator, some US operators took the lead in announcing the commercial and trial use of 5G. However, the recent war of words between US operators Sprint and AT&T about true and false 5G has risen to the level of legal proceedings, which has attracted everyone's attention. In early December last year, my country's regulatory department, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, issued 5G medium and low frequency band trial licenses to the three major operators. Also in December last year, the 2019 Central Economic Conference listed 5G commercial use as one of the 20 key tasks for 2019. Later in January 2019, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced that a 5G temporary license would be issued soon. There have been discussions and even disputes about when 5G will be commercially available, and all parties have objective reasons. So are the conditions for commercial use of 5G now met, and do we have confidence?

1. 5G Technology Maturity

On June 14, 2018, the 3GPP plenary meeting approved the freeze of the standalone (SA) function of the fifth-generation mobile communication technology standard (5G NR). The international 5G standard with a complete meaning was officially determined, which also became an important milestone in the history of 5G development. The 5G technology standard, which was originally advancing smoothly, encountered an unexpected setback in December last year. At the Italian plenary meeting, 3GPP suddenly announced that the R15 Late Drop standard, which was originally planned to be completed in December 2018, would be postponed for three months. In this way, R15 Late Drop and R15 Late Drop ASN.1 will not be completed until March 2019 respectively. Some communications professionals analyzed the atmosphere and believed that the postponement of the R15 plan may affect the subsequent R16 version freeze time, which may also be postponed from December 2019 to March 2020, and may even lead to the delay of the subsequent 5G service launch time. So far, discussions on the Internet about 5G technology not being mature and not having the conditions for deployment have begun to fly all over the sky. However, even if the R15 plan is postponed, does that mean that the conditions for 5G deployment are not met?

It can be said that some technical novices who are unaware of the truth, and have neither really read the relevant news reports in detail nor consulted technical experts in detail, have begun to follow the crowd and hotly discuss that 5G does not meet the conditions for commercial licensing. Industry insiders said that the two network deployment architectures, R15 NR NSA (New Air Interface Non-Independent Networking: the networking method is 4G core network, 4G base station, and the 4G core network supports connecting to 5G base stations) and R15 NR SA (New Air Interface Independent Networking: the networking method is 5G core network, 5G base station, which is the full version of 5G) are the most mainstream architectures at present, and the use of R15 Late Drop is not urgent, so the postponement of the standard freeze will not have a substantial impact on the commercial deployment of 5G. Moreover, 3GPP Chairman Balazs Bertenyi also emphasized that the postponement of the freeze period will not affect the first batch of 5G deployments. In addition, two recent domestic news reports are also worthy of attention: one is that China Mobile announced that it will lease 500 5G base stations, which shows China Mobile's determination to build a 5G network; the other is that the bidding for China Unicom's wireless network integration project, which has attracted much attention in the industry, has ended a few days ago. This project involves 416,000 4G base station equipment and supporting software, and the project is likely to involve capital expenditures of 25 billion yuan. Some analysts believe that China Unicom's large-scale 4G network construction is not only intended to make up for the shortcomings of the 4G network, but also to reserve resources in advance for the future use of 5G NSA networking. In addition, operators in the United States, South Korea and other countries have already begun 5G network deployment. In any case, even if some standards are delayed and frozen, the current 5G technical standards are fully equipped for deployment.

2. Application Scenarios of 5G in the Early Stage

In addition to concerns about 5G technical standards, the shortcomings of 5G application scenarios are also considered by everyone. Among the known and unknown application scenarios, the Internet of Things is undoubtedly a relatively clear and mature one at present. 5G's technical features such as large bandwidth, low latency, massive number of connections, and tight coverage provide the best foundation for the development of the Internet of Vehicles. To this end, my country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also issued the "Internet of Vehicles (Intelligent Connected Vehicles) Industry Development Action Plan" at the end of December last year, aiming to support the full use of my country's industrial advantages, optimize the policy environment, strengthen industry cooperation, break through key technologies, consolidate cross-industry foundations, and promote the formation of a new Internet of Vehicles industry ecosystem with deep integration, active innovation, security and reliability, and strong competitiveness. In the application of the industrial Internet, although 5G has the supporting conditions, the actual deployment application scenarios are not clear for the time being, and ICT companies and platforms are still needed to innovate and explore.

In addition to the connection between objects, 4G technology has already met the vast majority of consumer applications in the connection between people. In the short term, the most likely application of 5G's large bandwidth is in video. The signed article "Fighting for 5G+4K, these two brothers are having fun" published on C114 China Communications Network detailed the application of 5G in video. What needs more attention is that on the eve of the Spring Festival, the three major operators + Huawei and CCTV jointly signed a framework agreement on cooperation in building a 5G new media platform. At the 2019 Spring Festival Gala, the 5G+4K of the three major operators became the highlight of this year's Spring Festival Gala. In the future, the extended application of video under 5G's large bandwidth will shine in AR and VR.

3. 5G terminal situation

South Korea, which was the first to announce the official commercial use of 5G, currently mainly applies it to the industrial Internet. Although 5G applications in the United States can already be applied to ordinary users, they only achieve WIFI connection through hotspots, and even replace home wired broadband connections with 5G high bandwidth. In terms of mobile terminals, there are currently no terminals that can meet the conditions for listing and sales. However, according to ***, China Unicom announced on February 14 that the first batch of 5G smartphone test machines were officially delivered. Although, we have not seen the true face of the 5G smartphone test machine released by China Unicom.

It can be said that the biggest obstacle to the commercial use of 5G lies in the immaturity of terminals. In particular, there is a lack of terminals directly facing users. The call for 5G is very high, but the real experience for users is insufficient. This may be the main reason why the general public lacks confidence in the commercial use of 5G. Even if there are 5G WIFI applications, users need real 5G mobile terminal testing to get the real feeling. In addition, the price of 5G mobile terminals may not be affordable for ordinary consumers. According to the expectations given by all parties for the specific price of 5G mobile terminals, the highest price is about 5,000 yuan, and the highest price is over 10,000 yuan. This is too different from the current price of 4G terminals of 1,000 yuan. Therefore, even if 5G licenses are issued for commercial use, the popularization of 5G mobile terminals will not be easy to achieve in the short term. Therefore, from this perspective, the best way to dispel the concerns of all parties about the commercial use of 5G is to accelerate the listing and low-price popularization of 5G terminals. According to public reports on the Internet, Samsung, Huawei, Xiaomi, LG, Sony and other world-renowned mobile terminal manufacturers will release 5G terminals in late February. This is at least one month earlier than expected. The future of low-priced and ultra-low-priced 5G mobile phone terminals may also come faster than expected.

4. To what extent has my country’s 5G been deployed?

In fact, in terms of 5G construction planning, China Telecom, which has always been calm, has been quite active. On June 26, 2018, at the World Mobile Congress held in Shanghai, China Telecom officially released the "China Telecom 5G Technology White Paper". China Telecom's "5G Technology White Paper" includes the overall principles of 5G network evolution, 5G network evolution strategy, medium- and long-term strategy, 5G key technologies and networking solutions, etc., which comprehensively expresses its detailed plans and plans for 5G network construction, and provides a very good reference for guiding the research and development and development of network technology in the communications industry, including equipment manufacturers and operators. In terms of actual operations, China Mobile and China Unicom have also been quite proactive. At last year's Shanghai World Mobile Congress, China Unicom and Huawei also jointly released a white paper on indoor digitalization for 5G evolution; China Mobile also demonstrated its 5G development progress at this conference.

At the terminal level, operators including China Mobile and China Unicom have successively announced support plans for terminal manufacturers. Several domestic mobile terminal manufacturers have also announced their expectations for the launch of 5G mobile terminals on various occasions. In terms of chips related to terminals, manufacturers represented by Huawei are accelerating the pace of research and development and have demonstrated some chip results. As for the construction of the 5G ecosystem, various support funds are already on the way. In addition, it is important to mention that 5G medium and low frequency band licenses have been issued, and various tests by operators are already in full swing. 5G has been commercially licensed, perhaps the beginning of various large-scale deployment actions.

Although the dispute over real and fake 5G in the United States seems to have magnified the immaturity of 5G, we need to remind everyone that the maturity of technology requires time and practice, and only by participating and following from the beginning to the end can we ensure the leading position in the future. In addition to the above-mentioned considerations of the communications industry, technology level and ecological chain construction, the social and economic driving and enabling role of 5G is also worthy of consideration.