The 5G commercial era is coming, and large-scale commercial use will be achieved in 2020

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently announced that it has officially launched the third phase of 5G technology research and development trials, striving to achieve the basic goals of the third phase of trials by the end of 2018 and support the full launch of my country's 5G large-scale trials.

The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that the third phase of 5G technology research and development trials will focus on product development, verification and industry collaboration before 5G commercialization. It will carry out pre-commercial equipment single-site, networking, interoperability, and interconnection and interoperability testing of systems, chips, instruments and other upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, and comprehensively promote the main links of the industrial chain to basically reach commercial levels.

People who pay attention to 5G technology may find that there have been many important news about the development of 5G construction in recent times. In addition to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially launching the third phase of 5G technology research and development trials, Qualcomm recently announced that it has achieved the world's first 5G data connection based on the Snapdragon X505G modem chipset in the 28GHz millimeter wave band. In addition, Qualcomm also demonstrated the first 5G smartphone reference design, which also means that next year, mobile phone manufacturers can design real 5G mobile phones based on this solution; Guangdong Mobile took the lead in opening a 5G base station in Guangzhou University City in China and conducted 5G field tests; at the just-concluded 2017 Mobile World Congress, 5G construction became one of the important themes, and so on. These news are undoubtedly sending people a signal: we are about to usher in the era of 5G commercial use!

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5G commercial construction has made significant progress in countries around the world

From a global perspective, countries are now enthusiastically investing in the 5G technology wave. Data shows that the US government has basically established and completed the frequency planning of 5G from the authorization mechanism to the basic establishment; the European Union launched the "5G Action Plan" in 2016, planning to formulate a complete 5G deployment roadmap by the end of 2017 and start 5G pre-commercial testing in 2018; Japan's three major operators are expected to invest a total of 500 million yen in 5G, and have stated that they will provide 5G services to users starting in 2020.

Among them, China's efforts and strength in the commercialization of 5G far exceed those of other countries, especially the series of actions taken by China's three major operators.

At present, China Telecom has launched 5G innovation demonstration network trials in six cities, including Lanzhou, Chengdu, Shenzhen, Xiong'an, Suzhou and Shanghai. In early August this year, China Telecom announced the launch of the 5G innovation demonstration network in Xiong'an and released the "China Telecom 5G Innovation Demonstration Network White Paper", striving to achieve large-scale commercial use of 5G in 2020. China Telecom said: When it matures at the end of 2018, it will jointly innovate and explore some new services with vertical industries, and strive to achieve commercial use of 5G in key cities in 2020.

Yi Zhiling, a senior scientist at China Mobile Communications Research Institute, once said: China Mobile is preparing to deploy 5G in three phases, and has now entered the second phase, and is expected to be commercially available in 2020. At this year's MWC Shanghai Conference, China Mobile gave a clear development plan for 5G: in 2017, 5G field trials will be conducted in five cities, namely Beijing, Shanghai, Suzhou, Jiangsu, Guangzhou, and Ningbo, Zhejiang; large-scale trials will be carried out in 2018; pre-commercialization will be carried out in 2019; and large-scale commercialization will be achieved in 2020.

China Unicom has also teamed up with Huawei to establish a 5G field test base in Shanghai, completing the contiguous deployment of 5G high- and low-frequency areas. China Unicom's preliminary plan: 2017 is the technical verification stage, completing 2-5 small-scale 5G trials in 2-4 key cities; 2018 is a small-scale trial, completing the laboratory function verification of 5G commercial products and completing the Unicom construction plan; 2019 is the trial commercial period, gradually expanding the trial scale to more cities, and simultaneously promoting the pre-commercial use of 5G networks; 2020 is the commercial stage, achieving deployment in key cities and key areas, summarizing the trial commercial experience, and promoting it to cities across the country.

What are the benefits of 5G?

In fact, in addition to the efforts of major operators to prepare for the arrival of the 5G commercial era, governments of various countries have also continuously issued corresponding policies to speed up the deployment and construction of 5G. my country's "13th Five-Year Plan" also clearly proposed to actively promote the development of 5G and provide 5G commercial use in 2020. Moreover, the investment required for 5G commercial use is also very huge.

According to some institutions, in the 5G era, about 4 million base stations will be needed to achieve low-frequency wide-area full coverage in China, and 50 million small base stations will be needed for high-frequency deep coverage. During 2018-2025, the total investment scale of domestic operators in 5G macro base stations will be about 1.13 trillion yuan, an increase of more than 60% compared with 4G investment, and the total investment scale of small base stations is expected to exceed 200 billion yuan. So why does 5G technology trigger such crazy investment by operators? This must be related to the benefits that 5G can bring.

As we all know, compared with 4G, the most obvious benefit brought by 5G is the improvement of network speed. The "5G Economic and Social Impact White Paper" recently released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology pointed out that 5G networks will reach a peak rate at least 10 times that of 4G. Compared with 4G technology, 5G will provide a peak bandwidth of more than 10Gbps, and the user experience rate can be stabilized at 1Gbps-2Gbps. To give a simple example: with 5G, we can download a movie in one second, isn't it very happy? However, 5G is not just faster than 4G.

According to the forecast of research organization Gartner, in 2017, it is estimated that there will be 80 new IoT devices connected per second, and this number will rise to 250 per second in 2020. By 2020, there will be more than 6.4 billion devices "connected" worldwide. Ultra-high density of connections will cause the most serious problem of current mobile networks: severe lack of bandwidth. The density of 5G connections can reach 1 million per square kilometer, which can effectively support the access of massive IoT devices; the traffic density can reach 10Mbps per square meter, which can support more than a thousand times the growth of mobile business traffic in the future.

With the above two technical features, we can easily see the benefits that 5G can bring when we return to the actual application scenarios. At present, from the perspective of smart city construction, which is the most concerned issue for us now, 5G will directly promote the construction of smart cities, because 5G means faster response speed and more devices. In terms of specific application areas, the current popular smart transportation, smart security, smart home, smart meter, etc. will have a huge breakthrough due to the arrival of 5G. Especially smart security, public safety is a very important part of smart cities. The application of 5G technology will not only quickly realize high definition, but also realize intelligent applications such as automatic facial recognition.

As for the economic benefits that 5G will bring after commercial use, the "5G Economic and Social Impact White Paper" points out that starting from the official commercial use of 5G in 2020, it is expected to drive about 484 billion yuan in direct output that year, and will increase to 3.3 trillion yuan and 6.3 trillion yuan in 2025 and 2030 respectively, with an average annual compound growth rate of 29% over the past 10 years. In terms of indirect output, 5G will drive 1.2 trillion yuan, 6.3 trillion yuan and 10.6 trillion yuan in 2020, 2025 and 2030 respectively, with an average annual compound growth rate of 24%.

Summarize

In essence, 5G technology is a wider, faster and stronger information technology based on wireless sensors. The commercial use of 5G technology will quickly help build smart transportation, smart security, smart homes and smart cities, and realize the digital transformation and upgrading of the industry. At present, countries around the world are scrambling to participate in this fierce international competition. The Chinese government and major operators also attach great importance to the strategic layout of the 5G new generation of mobile communication technology and have achieved good results in this international competition. Judging from the existing achievements of all parties, 5G is getting closer and closer, and the anticipated 5G era is really coming.