5G Guide: Everything you want to know is here

Wireless communication technology is updated almost every ten years.

In 2000, 3G began to mature and be commercialized, in 2010, 4G began to mature and be commercialized, and 5G is expected to mature in 2020. Then 2019 will surely be the first year of 5G.

Currently, global operators are intensively deploying 5G commercial services. As of November 2018, 182 operators around the world have conducted 5G trials, deployments and investments in 78 countries. my country has announced that it will start trial commercial use in 2019 and promote large-scale commercial use in 2020; South Korea is expected to start large-scale commercial use in 2019; Europe will focus on exploring the industrial Internet, and some aggressive operators are expected to start trial commercial use in 2019. According to statistics, the first round of 5G commercial use will cover 1/3 of the world's population.

Judging from the results, 5G will bring about changes that are different from the past, but most people still have some doubts about 5G, and these doubts mainly come from the following aspects.

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Do we need 5G?

In the 3G era, users' demand for mobile Internet has been met, and the 4G network allows users to enjoy the convenience brought by mobile Internet anytime and anywhere. So, do we really need 5G?

First of all, my country has the world's largest mobile market and is an important participant and supporter of global 5G technology research and development and industrial innovation. my country has always attached great importance to the development of mobile communications. In 2006, the State Council issued the Outline of the National Medium- and Long-Term Science and Technology Development Plan, and the 16 major projects identified included a new generation of mobile wireless special network. This system fully supports the development of my country's mobile communications, achieving breakthroughs in 3G, synchronization with 4G, and initial leadership in 5G, and has achieved the goal of leading in some technical and business fields, which has laid the foundation for building a strong network and manufacturing country.

Secondly, the ICT industry has been driven by supply rather than demand for a long time, but the situation has changed now.

According to statistics, by 2025, there will be 100 billion connections in the world, of which 55% will be concentrated in the commercial field, such as intelligent production and smart cities, and their value lies in improving production efficiency and creating production benefits. In addition, 45% of the connections are used in consumer-oriented fields such as smart homes, Internet of Vehicles, and wearable devices, which will greatly improve people's quality of life. The connections of 7 billion people may only account for 10% of the total number of connections, while the vast majority of connections will be between people and things, and things and things. In other words, so far, 99% of devices have not been connected.

With the development of smart cities, more demands are placed on the network, the fundamental of which lies in the number of connections, bandwidth and latency.

Based on this, 5G came into being. Based on the above requirements, compared with existing mobile communication technologies, 5G should have hundreds of billions of connections, ultra-low latency at the millisecond level, and a communication rate of 10Gbps.

"4G changes life, 5G changes society." Qiu Gang, deputy inspector of the Major Projects Department of the Ministry of Science and Technology, said: "As the most important infrastructure in the Internet era, 5G will provide the technical prerequisite for the quality development of all walks of life and the transformation of the traditional economy into a new digital economy. It is a new driving force for economic development."

5G is here, where is 4G?

The future network will be a state of long-term coexistence of 4G LTE and 5G NR. The "China Telecom 5G Technology White Paper" has an accurate description of the evolution of 5G networks: "An important premise followed by the evolution of 5G networks is that 4G and 5G networks will coexist for a long time. 5G and existing networks such as 4G and WiFi can jointly meet the needs of multiple scenarios and realize indoor and outdoor network collaboration."

As mentioned before, 4G networks can already meet the current needs of users, such as smooth video and image transmission. Therefore, the application scenarios of 5G in the future will be more specific in industrial Internet, manufacturing, intelligent driving and other application scenarios. The two have the characteristics of long-term coexistence and coordinated development.

Ericsson Northeast Asia Chief Marketing Officer Zhang Zhiwei said: "There is no need to rely on converting 4G users into 5G users to develop 5G. Even if it does not replace 4G, 5G will find its own differentiated place to survive."

In addition, there is still controversy over whether there is market demand for 5G speeds. In fact, in the early days of the 4G era, some people questioned the high speeds. Facts show that after a period of development, the supply and demand relationship of speeds does not have the so-called "waste" problem.

At the same time, it is worth noting that as user traffic demand continues to surge, the main challenge facing 4G networks is not the speed, but the network capacity. The first 5G standard R15 focuses on enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), introducing wider frequency bands and technologies such as Massive MIMO, which can make the network capacity layer thicker without adding new sites, releasing the suppressed user traffic demand. Huawei's "All Bands Go to 5G" network evolution strategy, 5G deployment is not limited to C-Band and millimeter waves, and Sub-3G spectrum also has the ability to evolve to 5G, so as to continuously introduce new 5G capabilities more smoothly, and achieve 10 times the network capacity, 10dB coverage enhancement and 10 times the experience improvement.

Will mobile phones be affected?

In 2019, the first batch of 5G smartphones, including foldable phones, will be launched on the market. Mainstream terminal manufacturers will quickly launch economical thousand-yuan phones after 5G commercialization, which will in turn promote the development of the 5G industry.

Xiaomi has already opened up the 5G command and data link connection in the Sub-6GHz (below 6GHz) frequency band in September this year. On October 23, Xiaomi opened up the connection in the mmWave millimeter wave band. On November 22, Xiaomi President Lin Bin sent the first Weibo through a Xiaomi MIX 3 engineering machine through the 5G network. According to GSMArena on November 23, the 5G version of Xiaomi Mix 3 may be launched in Europe in 2019, which will be the world's first 5G smartphone.

Samsung is expected to launch the 5G version of the Galaxy S10 Plus in the spring of 2019. It is reported that the product will take advantage of the tenth anniversary of the release of the Galaxy series and be released as the latest flagship product in the series. The internal code name of this phone is "Beyond X". It will have a 6.44-inch screen and 6 cameras, including two front cameras and four rear cameras, and support under-screen fingerprint recognition. The phone is expected to debut in mid-February next year, and Samsung hopes that the product will be the biggest highlight of its exhibition during MWC. Samsung's folding screen mobile phone is also under development, and it is reported that the 5G version of the product is expected to be launched in the second half of next year.

As for Huawei, the latest news shows that it plans to launch a foldable 5G mobile phone at the MWC in February 2019, and the official sales time of the phone may be in the second half of 2019. At the same time, around next year's MWC, Huawei may also release the first P30 Pro mobile phone equipped with a 5G baseband.

OPPO CEO Chen Mingyong said: "5G is a trend that OPPO must seize. In addition to striving to become one of the first manufacturers to launch 5G mobile phones, the exploration of application scenarios in the 5G+ era will ultimately determine the value of 5G. In the future, when 5G and AI are widely used in the Internet of Everything era, OPPO will strive to become a leader in this era." In fact, OPPO established a 5G team as early as 2015 and started 5G research and development at the beginning of standard formulation. Since the 5G standard was frozen in December 2017, OPPO has quickly invested in 5G product research and development. In August this year, it took the lead in opening up 5G signaling and data links, and in October, it realized the first 5G mobile phone Internet access.

In the middle of this month, ZTE announced on its official Weibo that ZTE mobile phones have achieved 5G calls, 5G Internet access, and 5G WeChat sending and receiving, indicating that in ZTE's laboratory, 5G terminal mobile phones have successfully achieved WeChat information and data sending and receiving. At the end of last month, ZTE mobile phones and data terminals dialed the phone signal at the Shanghai R&D Center, officially completing the 5G call of the simulation system. It is reported that ZTE's 5G terminals will launch 5G commercial mobile phones in the first half of next year, and a large number of 5G terminals will begin to be launched in batches in 2020.

Lenovo's Motorola has launched the first mobile phone that supports 5G module, Moto Z3, on August 2 this year. This month, Verizon announced that it has successfully tested the 3GPP 5G NR (New Radio) commercial network on the Moto Z3 mobile phone and achieved Internet access using the 5G network.

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Apple may be the manufacturer with the most conservative attitude towards 5G mobile phones. At this year's Ao Asia Forum 2018 Annual Meeting, Apple's global vice president Ge Yue said that Apple will fully embrace 5G technology only after ensuring that important indicators such as energy consumption and battery temperature after using 5G mobile phones are not problematic and do not affect user experience.

So, when can I use 5G?

In June this year, Beijing launched the Science and Technology Innovation Fund, with a parent fund of 30 billion yuan, and a 5G industry fund is also being planned. At present, Beijing is preparing to build a 5G research institute to accelerate the research of core key technologies. At the same time, it will accelerate the implementation of 5G applications in intelligent transportation, smart cities, ultra-high-definition video, etc., make full use of the construction of Beijing's sub-center and new airport, the World Horticultural Exposition, the Winter Olympics, and the upgrading and renovation of the Tiananmen Square, and other application scenarios to showcase and demonstrate a batch of 5G new technologies and new achievements.

As for operators, as early as October 2017, China Telecom had completed the deployment of the country's first 5G trial site in Shenzhen. It is planned that by March 2019, 70 sites will be built in Shenzhen, and further expanded to Futian, Bao'an, Pingshan and other areas. Among them, with Shenzhen Software Industry Base (Double Innovation Park) as the center, 50 5G sites will be built to form a small-scale contiguous coverage. The pilot area includes the Double Innovation Park, the Science and Technology Ecological Park and the Shenzhen University campus. It is worth mentioning that China Telecom's National Double Innovation Capability Open Service Base and China Telecom's 5G Double Innovation Capability Open Center and China Telecom's Internet of Things Industry Ecological Innovation Center have recently been officially opened to the public in Shenzhen Bay Science and Technology Ecological Park in Nanshan District.

At present, China Mobile has provided more than 100 million yuan in financial support for the 5G joint innovation project and provided more than 1,000 5G base station test environments in 17 cities.

As of the end of September, 227 partners have joined 5G Alliance and built 14 regional open laboratories. Each open laboratory combines local characteristics to incubate applications. For example, Jiangsu 5G Alliance Open Laboratory mainly focuses on the Internet of Vehicles and Industrial Internet.

In terms of 5G application demonstration projects, China Mobile will start carrying out nine categories of 5G application demonstrations in 12 cities in the first half of 2019, including medical care, artificial intelligence, transportation, education, industrial manufacturing, energy, municipal administration, video+, entertainment, etc.

The China Joint 5G Innovation Center was officially established in Chengdu on September 29, becoming China Unicom's first innovation center in the west. Sichuan Unicom launched an end-to-end 5G trial commercial network at West China Hospital and Chengdu Third Hospital, and conducted relevant business tests. In the commercial terminal environment, the test peak rate can reach more than 1.8Gbps, which can meet the relevant requirements for the subsequent commercial use of 5G networks.

Wireless networks are changing the way people communicate and access information, and network access anytime, anywhere is also driving changes in the telecommunications industry. In the near future, wireless access will become the main access method. 5G wireless technology will connect all applications, services, and things through a flexible, reliable, and secure wireless network, ushering in an era of mobile Internet of Everything.