The 5G era is coming. How do the three major operators plan their layout?

With the continuous development of science and technology, the 2G and 3G networks that were used by most people in the past will gradually withdraw from the stage of history. At present, China has built the world's largest 4G network, and 4G network has become the first choice for most people. However, mankind has not stopped exploring, and in this context, 5G network has emerged. According to reports, on June 25, China's first 5G base station was officially opened in Guangzhou University City. The base station was built by Guangdong Mobile and equipment manufacturers in preparation for the upcoming 2017 Mobile World Congress. The next step will be to deploy it in the university city's gymnasium, library, canteen, teaching building and other places.

From the appearance of 5G at MWC this year to now, it has developed very rapidly. At present, the three major operators have already started 5G layout, striving to win this big pie. So, what changes will the 5G era bring? When will the three major operators bring us into the 5G era? Next, let's talk about these issues.

What is 5G?

5G is the fifth generation of mobile communication technology, which is an extension of the 4G technology currently being promoted. Although there is no standardized definition of the 5G standard, many communication experts believe that 5G is completely different from 4G. It is not only a technological update, but also a brand new technology.

According to the mobile communication technology update cycle of approximately every 10 years, the fifth generation of mobile communication technology will be officially commercialized around 2020.

At the beginning of this year, the draft 5G indicators released by the International Telecommunication Union mentioned that each 5G base station must provide at least 20Gbps downstream and 10Gbps upstream broadband transmission capabilities; it must also ensure that user data connections on vehicles traveling at 500 (km/h) are not interrupted.

In addition, the delay in connecting users cannot exceed 4 milliseconds, while maintaining an ultra-low latency communication of 1 millisecond; a single 5G network can carry at least 1 million devices within an area of ​​​​every square kilometer.

The layout of 5G network by the three major operators

China Mobile: 5G industry layout is accelerating and is expected to be commercially available in 2020

China Mobile has formulated a 5G development plan for 2020 and established the "China Mobile 5G Joint Innovation Center". It is developing business applications and industrial layout with industry partners in six major areas: basic communication capabilities, Internet of Things, Internet of Vehicles, Industrial Internet, cloud robots, and virtual/augmented reality.

It is reported that since China Mobile announced the launch of the China Mobile 5G Joint Innovation Center in February this year, the number of partners has increased from the original 11 to 42. The three types of laboratories, including the central laboratory, regional laboratory and partner joint laboratory, have also started related work. 5G vertical industries and new application scenarios have also begun to gradually move out of the laboratories.

According to the work deployment, in the next stage, in addition to continuing the corresponding 5G research and development, China Mobile will also launch large-scale network testing at an appropriate time and conduct application trials with partner companies to make further preparations for the official commercial use of 5G networks in the future.

China Telecom: Three steps and keeping up with policies

China Telecom plans to utilize high-frequency spectrum coordination, with medium and low frequencies as the basis and high frequencies as the supplement, to carry out verification simultaneously and jointly promote the implementation of 5G technology.

It is planned to launch the first 5G network in the sub-6GHz frequency band by 2025. At the same time, in the context of Transformation 3.0, China Telecom caters to the development trend of 5G, combines the 2025 network reconstruction, and comprehensively carries out 5G-related research and test verification, planning to deploy in three steps:

First, by 2018, we will continue to conduct in-depth research on the 5G network evolution architecture and key technologies and verify technical concepts, propose technical solutions for the evolution from 4G to 5G based on our own needs, grasp the trends that affect technological development and standards, and carry out laboratory tests and field tests of some key technologies in a timely manner.

The second step is to carry out system and networking capability verification of 4G to 5G from 2018 to 2020, formulate enterprise technical specifications, provide technical guidance for the introduction of 5G technology networking, and realize trial commercial deployment of some mature 5G technologies.

The third step is to continue research, testing and pre-commercialization of subsequent 5G network technologies from 2020 to 2025 in accordance with the CTNet2025 network development goals.

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In addition, China Telecom is also deploying its business network in Xiongan New Area. China Telecom will achieve full coverage of Tianyi 4G and next-generation Internet of Things (NB-IoT) in the new area, and will deploy 5G test networks in the new area in advance.

In addition, China Telecom will also proactively deploy cloud-network integrated, secure and reliable smart city information infrastructure capabilities in Xiongan New Area to provide a wealth of information applications.

China Unicom: Detailed planning and seeking cooperation

By the end of 2016, China Unicom had completed the layout of key technologies for 5G end-to-end network architecture and the construction of 5G Open Lab to meet the needs of 5G business demonstration and single-point technical performance verification.

It is planned to complete the key technology research of 5G wireless, network, transmission and security in 2017, and complete the construction of 5G laboratory environment based on 5G Open Lab; in 2018, complete the laboratory verification of 5G key technologies, and also complete China Unicom's 5G construction plan; in 2019, complete the 5G field network verification; in 2020, realize the commercial use of China Unicom's 5G network.

On February 10 this year, China Unicom and Huawei completed the industry's first field verification of FDD Massive MIMO technology in Shanghai. On a 20MHz spectrum, using existing two-antenna receiving terminals, the network achieved a peak rate of 697.3Mbit/s, which is 4.8 times that of traditional LTE FDD.

In addition, China Unicom said that it has cooperated with many companies at home and abroad to establish 5G laboratories and plans to promote the commercial deployment of 5G. Among them, it has carried out 5G cooperation with Qualcomm to jointly build a 5G network.

What changes will 5G bring?

5G is the abbreviation for the fifth generation of communication technology. Compared with 4G, 5G network has stronger performance and supports application scenarios with ultra-high speed, ultra-low latency and ultra-large connection.

For ordinary people like us, the most intuitive change of 5G is the change in network speed. It is revealed that in the Guangdong Mobile 5G field environment, the 5G network speed is stably maintained at more than 2Gbps, which is 250MB/s.

The increase in network speed will inevitably be accompanied by an increase in service charges. Although the 5G international standard has not yet been fully formulated and is not expected to be commercialized until 2020, the charges will definitely be much more expensive than 4G. After all, operators are not researching new technologies for charity.

Maybe the joke “If you don’t turn off your data at night and wake up to find your house is mobile” will come true.

In the early days of 5G, the charges are expected to be difficult for ordinary people to accept, because 5G networks are still an emerging industry, and a lot of money is required from equipment to research and development technology, and operators are eager to recover costs.

As time goes by, technology is constantly optimized, and the construction of basic equipment is completed, the charges should return to a level acceptable to the public. After all, if it is scaled up and the number of users increases, operators can make more money.

Huge impact on the Internet industry

The impact of 5G may not be that great for some traditional industries because they do not have much demand for the network. However, it may bring about earth-shaking changes for some new Internet industries because of the large capacity, high speed and low latency of 5G networks.

Let’s take the currently most popular autonomous driving as an example. As we all know, the technology of autonomous driving includes the interconnection of various devices such as video cameras, radar sensors and laser rangefinders to understand the surrounding traffic conditions, and finally process and transmit data through data centers.

One of the core technologies of autonomous driving is the data center. The autonomous driving process requires a lot of data such as the positioning of the vehicle, the current status of the vehicle, the condition of surrounding vehicles, and the real-time road conditions, which requires frequent interaction with the data center.

In addition, in addition to meeting the needs for cars, 5G's high speed can also meet the passengers' needs for in-car infotainment such as AR/VR, games, movies, and mobile office.

Low latency can lead to shorter response times. 4G technology can provide good response speeds when there are fewer users, but once there are too many connections near the base station, the latency for each user will increase significantly.

The increase in delay is very dangerous for self-driving cars; a brake signal issued half a second late can cause an accident.

5G can solve this problem because the load capacity of 5G network will be much stronger than 4G, and network congestion will be greatly reduced.

Secondly, 5G is more user-friendly. For example, 5G technology will take special considerations for high-priority users such as autonomous vehicles, ensuring that vehicle control signals can always be transmitted at a fast enough response speed. However, allocating network processing capacity according to data priority is difficult to achieve with existing 4G technology.

In fact, not only the automotive industry, but also a number of Internet industries such as VR, panoramic live broadcast, and telemedicine will bring about earth-shaking changes.

Summarize

If all major operators strictly implement the schedule, 5G networks can be commercialized as early as 2020, and the 5G era will officially arrive by then.

However, there has always been a lot of public opinion about 5G. Some people believe that 4G has basically met people's needs at present, so there is no need to rush to promote 5G, and 4G coverage should be improved first.

But in fact, 4G network is still far from enough for some enterprises, so 4G coverage and 5G promotion research can be done at the same time. Technological progress is so rapid that in just 30 years, we have experienced a leap from 1G to 4G.

Especially in the rapidly developing mobile phone industry, data is growing explosively, and the resulting network congestion should be resolved.