Editor's note: This article is from the WeChat public number "Tencent deep network" (ID: qqshenwang), the author of Ma Guanxia,.
"I'm very happy to get the Guangdong Telecom @ Guangdong Tianyi 0001 No. 5G cell phone card, hurry to change the Reno 5G to try." On the morning of June 6, OPPO Vice President Shen Yiren showed his Guangdong Telecom No. 0001 5G cell phone card on Weibo, and Shen Yiren apparently wanted to take advantage of the heat of the issuance of 5G commercial licenses to build up momentum for OPPO's 5G phone.
Just a few hours before Shen Yiren's tweet, the boots of China's 5G commercial license finally landed. The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) officially issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Radio and Television.The issuance of 5G commercial licenses signifies that China's communications industry has officially entered the 5G era. China has also become the fifth country in the world to launch 5G services after South Korea, the United States, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
It is worth noting that the issuance of 5G commercial licenses is six months earlier than expected, and in addition to the traditional three major telecom operators, China Radio and Television has also obtained a 5G commercial license. 5G technology will undoubtedly make the rapid development of some industries previously limited by the communications infrastructure, but due to the yet to be perfected 5G network facilities and terminal equipment, the distance from the large-scale commercial use of 5G still have a It will be some time before 5G can be commercialized on a large scale.
Why early release
In January this year, Minister of Industry and Information Technology Miao Wei mentioned in an interview with the media that 5G temporary licenses will be issued in a number of cities in 2019, so that large-scale networking can be realized first in some cities and hotspots, and at the same time to accelerate the process of industrialization of terminals and network construction. According to the previous schedule of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the three major operators, the official 5G license will be issued only in 2020. Compared to the previous plan, the issuance of China's 5G commercial license has been advanced by half a year.
The reason why the 5G commercial license was issued half a year earlier is, on the one hand, that China has completed the 5G technology research and development test.5G technology research and development test is divided into three stages: 5G key technology verification, 5G technology program verification and 5G system network verification.In 2016, China's 5G test was formally launched, and according to the plan, the 5G technology research and development test was mainly carried out from 2016 to 2018, and the 5G product research and development test was mainly carried out from 2019 to 2020 is mainly for 5G product development tests. But by the end of 2018, China had already completed the three stages of 5G technology research and development tests.
Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, also revealed in a previous interview with CaiyaoYou that 5G pre-commercial trials in Beijing, Hangzhou, Guangzhou and other places are no worse than the commercial results in the United States and South Korea. In other words, China's 5G commercial technology is ready.
On the other hand, the 5G competition among countries around the world has become more and more intense. According to Qualcomm's forecast, 5G will create $12.3 trillion in economic output globally by 2035, and it is expected that between 2020 and 2035, the contribution of 5G-driven global economic growth will reach about $3 trillion, which is comparable to the current gross domestic product of India.
In the face of the huge economic benefits that 5G will bring, the pace of 5G construction in countries around the world has been significantly accelerated this year, and at present, South Korea, the United States, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom have opened 5G services one after another. China has followed the trend and issued 5G commercial licenses in advance, with the intention of accelerating the commercialization of 5G and enhancing competitiveness.
Communication person Zhao Yu believes that the main purpose of the licensing of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is to enhance the focus of foreign enterprises on the domestic 5G market, and only an open and cooperative market is conducive to the unification of 5G standards. China's acceleration of 5G commercialization can rapidly reduce the cost of all aspects of the 5G industry, effectively output the domestic 5G industry application samples, and provide a reference evolution path and business model for global 5G development.
Some Zhihu users analyze that if China wants to develop 5G, the national strategic level should create a better ecological and industrial environment, and help these companies to form a factual leading competitiveness in the real world. Therefore, the issuance of 5G licenses can play a catalytic and accelerating role in 5G future scenarios and technical specifications, essentially allowing Chinese equipment suppliers to have more say.
In addition to the early issuance of the license, the fourth 5G commercial license won by the broadcaster has also attracted the same attention. Why was the broadcaster able to obtain the license? What is the role of this license? And what is the impact on the overall telecommunications market?
What does it mean for a broadcaster to be licensed?
In the early days, broadcasters had their own Cable Modem (cable TV network), but at that time, broadcasters only had fixed-line broadband licenses, no mobile network licenses, and never commercialized their own broadband to the public on a large scale. The lack of license largely led to broadcasters missed the opportunity to become the broadband hegemony, after all, industry insiders generally believe that the initial Cable Modem compared to the Telecommunications Bureau's ISDN as well as the later ADSL have certain advantages.
On May 5, 2016, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology ("MIIT") issued the Basic Telecommunications Business License to China Radio and Television Network Corporation ("CRTC"), approving the broadcaster to operate the Internet domestic data transmission business and the domestic communication facility service business nationwide. This means that China Radio and Television became the fourth largest basic telecom operator after China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom.
And at the November 22, 2018 "Promoting the National 'Smart Radio and Television' Construction Site Meeting," Nie Chenxi, Secretary of the Party Group and Director General of the State Administration of Radio and Television (SAR&T), announced that "the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has agreed to the participation of broadcasting grids in the construction of 5G , and State Grid is applying for mobile communication qualifications and a 5G license." Since then, it is widely expected that it has been just a matter of time for the broadcaster to obtain a 5G commercial license. With this radio and television licenses, the outside world's conjecture is also finally confirmed.
As a matter of fact, compared with the three major operators, broadcasting has its own advantages. Radio and television have the golden spectrum of 700MHz, which is at low frequency and has the advantages of wide signal coverage and strong penetration. This good network coverage effect means that 5G network construction and networking costs are relatively low, according to estimates, if the broadcaster uses 700MHz for 5G network coverage, then the overall coverage cost will be lower than the three major operators by about 30%.
As of 2018, the number of cable TV subscribers in the country is at 223 million. According to the analysis of the financial media Globe and Mail, if the broadcaster operates 5G wireless mobile services, it will need to invest in the construction of at least 200,000 base stations, adding about 60 billion yuan of capital investment.
After the license was issued on June 6, Zeng Qingjun, deputy general manager of China Radio and Television Network Corporation Limited, said in a media interview that the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a 5G license to China Radio and Television, which is actually issued to the national cable television industry and the national radio and television industry, and the national radio and television industry can take advantage of this opportunity to build a high starting point of the modern communication network.
Zeng Qingjun said that the network operation idea of radio and television is different from that of the three major telecom operators, and that the 5G network of China's radio and television will be a "5G network with a high starting point and high technology that brings together modern communication and Internet of Things (IoT) services of radio and television," aiming to enable radio and television users to experience smart radio and television services represented by ultra-high definition television and even socialized smart city services. The purpose is to enable broadcasting users to experience intelligent broadcasting services represented by ultra-high-definition TV, and even socialized smart city services.
In the 5G era, broadcasters are more likely to focus on 4K, 8K and other ultra-high-definition video services, rather than competing with operators for 5G mobile services, and should not bring a substantial impact on the telecom market.
Why China's 5G is leading the way
"1G blank, 2G follow, 3G participation, 4G parallel run" can basically summarize the development of China's communications industry, to the 5G era, China is expected to achieve the lead.
In terms of technical standards, the 5G concepts, application scenarios and technical indicators advocated by China have been incorporated into the 5G definition of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). As of May 2019, a total of 28 enterprises around the world have declared 5G standard-essential patents, and the number of declarations made by Chinese enterprises accounted for more than 30%, ranking first.
On June 6, after the issuance of 5G commercial licenses, Huawei responded that it will fully support Chinese operators to build China's 5G with its end-to-end leading 5G capabilities.Huawei is the world's largest telecom equipment vendor, and since April last year, Huawei has carried out 5G scale commercial trials with China's three major operators in more than 40 cities in China, including urban areas, indoor, highways, subways and other multi-scene testing. All of them have reached commercial standards.
In addition to Huawei, ZTE, OPPO, VIVO, Xiaomi, and China Xinxin, among other manufacturers, have all expressed full confidence in the commercialization of 5G in China. The four licensed operators, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Radio and Television, on the other hand, expressed their readiness from the perspective of specific 5G commercial services.
The stance of domestic manufacturers also shows China's complete and mature 5G industry chain from the side, from the chip, communication equipment, operators to terminals, domestic manufacturers in the 5G industry chain upstream, midstream and downstream have a layout, in some key technology standards and even has been in the global lead.
In the baseband chip market, although Qualcomm has always maintained a market share of more than 50%, domestic manufacturers have also begun to make efforts in the field of 5G baseband chips.At the beginning of 2019, Huawei's Baron 5000 and Tiangang, as well as Ziguang Zhanrui's Chuntou 510 were released successively. Huawei's previous statement that it is willing to provide 5G chips to Apple is as good as new.
In the communications equipment market, Huawei and ZTE are both among the world's most important telecom equipment vendors, and according to a Strategy Analytics report, Huawei is ranked No. 1 among global 5G equipment vendors, ahead of Ericsson and Nokia. So far, Huawei has won 46 5G commercial contracts in 30 countries around the world and has shipped more than 100,000 5G base stations, ranking first in the world.
And it is worth noting that Huawei is currently awarded 5G commercial contracts are from markets outside mainland China, with the official opening of the domestic 5G commercial, Ericsson and Nokia and Huawei's gap or will be further widened. According to CITIC Securities in the latest research report predicted that due to Huawei's technological advantages in 5G, commercial maturity, cost advantages, etc., its share of the domestic 5G telecom equipment market is likely to increase to 55%.
At the operator level, China's three major telecom operators have already conducted 5G field tests in some large and medium-sized cities, accumulating rich pre-commercial experience. Considering that Chinese operators currently rank among the world's top operators in terms of subscriber scale, network capacity, and overall revenue, Chinese operators also have an advantage in investing in infrastructure such as 5G base stations.
In the terminal market, Huawei, glory, ZTE, millet, OV and other Chinese cell phone manufacturers of 5G cell phone equipment are ready, it is expected that by the second half of this year, the major domestic cell phone manufacturers will intensively release 5G cell phone products.
According to CTIA, China is leading the 5G race to the top among major countries around the world, joining South Korea, the United States and Japan in the first tier, with pilot commercialization expected in 2019 and commercial scale in 2020. The U.K., Germany and France are in the second tier, with trial commercialization expected by 2020. Canada, Russia and Singapore are in the third tier, with pilot commercialization expected after 2020.
In addition to the accumulation of patents and a well-developed industrial chain, rich application scenarios also offer great potential for China's 5G commercialization. Just as China's mobile Internet applications flourished in the 4G era, China is expected to lead the way in the 5G era, which will also give rise to more application possibilities.
Prospects for 5G Commercial Applications
The international standardization organization 3GPP has defined three major business scenarios for 5G technology: eMBB (enhanced mobile broadband), which is oriented to high-traffic mobile broadband services such as 3D/Ultra High Definition (UHD) video and mainly upgrades the consumer traffic of C-end users; mMTC (massive machine class communication), which is oriented to large-scale IoT services, and mainly includes applications such as the industrial Internet; and uRLLC (highly reliable low-latency communication) The main application representatives are driverless, industrial automation and other businesses.
For the deployment architecture of 5G networks, 3GPP has set
THE END
