Under the 5G trend | A comparison of deployment between China and the United States

At present, 5G communication technology has caused a strong response around the world, and countries are making targeted plans and layouts to strive for greater competitive advantages in this field. 5G is not only a next-generation communication technology, but also affects the competitive advantages at the national level and even involves national defense security.

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The Chinese government has clearly launched the "Network Power" strategy and the related "Internet +" action plan in the "13th Five-Year Plan". Under the implementation of the strategic plan, the domestic communications industry and the closely related Internet industry have achieved rapid development in recent years. In the new version of the "National Security Strategy Report of the United States" released in 2017, the United States listed the launch of 5G networks as one of the important national security tasks. It can be seen that China and the United States have coincidentally placed the development of 5G in a prominent position in network construction, and a competition in the 5G field is inevitable.

5G has a huge impact in the context of globalization

As globalization deepens, the development and construction of 5G is no longer just a matter of one country, but a large-scale project that affects the global communication system. By formulating a global unified standard, the compatibility between communication equipment and components can be enhanced, greatly saving the development and operation costs of the communication network.

Looking back to the era of "seven countries and eight systems" many years ago, it was precisely because of the separation between various systems that the Chinese communications market was divided up by seven foreign countries, causing many troubles to the entire communications system. If the relevant technical standards are unified worldwide, the emerging business model using 5G will be easier to establish, and the 5G era will naturally come earlier. At present, the global 5G standards are mainly jointly formulated by China, the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea. Formulating 5G standards is not only a technical and economic issue, but also a game of scientific and technological strength among major countries.

As the 5G era approaches, China is rising

In the 3G era, Qualcomm of the United States dominated the formulation of almost all standards. Whether it was Europe's WCDMA or China's TD-SCDMA, Qualcomm had a strong voice. In addition, Qualcomm is also the main provider of chips, with obvious patent advantages in standards and chips, forcing Chinese and European companies to pay high patent fees to Qualcomm. In the 4G era, Europe and China took advantage of the situation to rise, and China achieved a significant improvement in its communication capabilities and won many new achievements in the process. With 5G approaching, China's Huawei and ZTE have become the world's leading communication equipment manufacturers, and have won a certain voice in the formulation of 5G standards.

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5G networks have the excellent characteristics of high bandwidth, low latency, and low power consumption. In terms of mobile phone communications, 5G can increase the current rate by 10-100 times. In addition, 5G will also drive the development of many trillion-level emerging industries such as the Internet of Things, big data, smart cities, artificial intelligence, and driverless cars. It is undoubtedly one of the key technologies for the future society. According to IHS Markit's forecast, by 2035, 5G will create $12.3 trillion in economic output worldwide, which shows how huge the impact of 5G will be on the future.

The rapid development of 5G has brought a new development opportunity to the entire communications industry, especially base stations, optical fiber cables, communications chips, and radio frequency device manufacturers will benefit from more orders. At present, the world's three largest communications equipment manufacturers are Huawei, Ericsson, and Nokia. At present, a large-scale communications industry chain has been formed in China, and it has certain technology and product output capabilities. Among the few giant communications equipment manufacturers in the world, China already has Huawei and ZTE, which also indirectly reflects that China's competitiveness in the communications field has increased significantly in recent years.

Both China and the United States are fully committed to promoting their own 5G construction

In mid-April this year, the United States launched a three-month ban on ZTE, which dealt a heavy blow to ZTE and directly led to a serious loss in its first quarter of this year. The potential impact of the follow-up is still unknown. Just last month, T-Mobile, the third largest telecom operator in the United States, signed a sky-high contract of up to US$3.5 billion with Nokia, breaking the record for the largest contract amount in the history of communication equipment. This is also a true reflection of the United States' efforts to deploy 5G.

At present, the US government-led communications equipment market has eliminated the participation of Huawei and ZTE on the grounds of national defense security, and there are also considerations behind restricting the development of China's communications. Accenture of the United States published a report, which believes that building and maintaining 5G networks in the United States can create 3 million jobs and stimulate GDP growth of 500 billion US dollars.

(Compiled based on public data)

In 2016, Huawei's Polar coding scheme was selected into the 5G short code signaling standard, which helped China gain a firm foothold in the communication coding field. In 2017, ZTE made a number of important breakthroughs in the 5G field. In February, ZTE released a full range of 5G pre-commercial base stations and launched Flexhual, a 5G bearer solution based on IP and light. In October, ZTE cooperated with Italy's Wind Tre and Open Fiber to launch Europe's first 5G pre-commercial network. In December, ZTE launched a 5G core product based on a service-oriented architecture. From having no say at the beginning to the 5G era, Chinese companies are increasingly involved in the establishment of 5G standards.

The United States has the world's best technological strength. In the 3G and 4G eras, Qualcomm was the leader in setting relevant standards, and these advantages also make Qualcomm still in the leading position in 5G technology development and standard setting. However, compared with the 3G era, Qualcomm's strength is no longer the same.

Summarize

From 5G standard formulation, R&D testing to subsequent industrial applications, 5G will face challenges in different directions throughout its entire life cycle. Therefore, the competition in 5G is actually diversified and will last for a long time, extending to various fields.

From the perspective of ordinary consumers, the arrival of 5G will bring changes to all aspects of our lives. From the development of recent decades, the pace of technology changing the world is so fast that we should invest more thinking to cope with this rapidly changing world. After all, returning to ourselves, the reshaping of lifestyle by technology is actually a future with both opportunities and challenges.