There are more than 400 million 5G terminal users nationwide. Why are we still "insensitive" to 5G?

 

 According to news from CCTV in September this year, the relevant person in charge of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology introduced that from January to August this year, domestic 5G mobile phone shipments reached 168 million units, an increase of 80% year-on-year, and the cumulative number of 5G base stations built in my country reached 1.037 million. It has covered all prefecture-level cities, more than 95% of counties and urban areas, and 35% of towns, towns and districts across the country, with 5G terminal users exceeding 400 million.

 

China has built the world's largest 5G network! However, we don't seem to feel much about 5G. According to the "2020 Communications Industry Statistical Bulletin" issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2020, my country's 4G users reached 1.289 billion. Although 5G users are increasing, the speed is very slow. From the first year of 5G in 2019 to the present, two years have passed, and 4G users still dominate.

 

On the surface, the package fee is too expensive, and the cheapest package takes six to seventy-one months. In terms of signal, the experience is not good in extreme conditions, and the signal on the highway is sometimes not as good as 4G. Switching to a 5G package, except for a faster network speed, there are not many qualitative changes. In fact, these are not the main reasons. In the era of 3G and 4G, user needs are in the forefront of technology. Before the advent of the 3G and 4G era, people had done some practice and research on the mobile computing scene, instead of thinking about demand with new technologies. In the 5G era, the opposite is true. The users themselves have no obvious needs. It seems that they are matching their needs through new technologies without success. We are generally indifferent to 5G, mainly because of the following 4 aspects: High cost of range coverage Because of signal frequency, wavelength and transmission attenuation, a 2G base station can cover 7 kilometers, a 4G base station can cover 1 km, and a 5G base station can only cover 300 meters. There are about 5 million 4G base stations in the world, and China accounts for more than 3.4 million. It can be said that we have invested a lot of money for 4G coverage. Unlike many developed countries, operators do not provide 4G in many remote areas in order to save costs. service.

 

 If China wants to replace all the original 4G coverage areas with 5G services, it will need at least 13.6 million base stations, and a 5G base station will cost between 200,000 and 600,000, and the total investment will reach an astonishing 6.5 trillion! At the China International Information and Communication Exhibition in 2021, Xin Guobin, the deputy minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that as of August 2021, my country has built more than 1 million 5G base stations. Although this data accounts for more than 70% of the global population, there is still a big gap between it and full country coverage. The high cost of coverage makes 5G unable to achieve full coverage in a short period of time, and the experience of 5G in many areas is not as good as 4G. 5G base station consumes high power The general 4G single system power consumption is 1300w, and the 5G base station single system is about three times this figure, Huawei's 3500w, ZTE's 3255w. In this way, under the premise of the same coverage area, the power consumption cost per unit area of 5G is 12 times that of 4G! Comprehensive coverage is enough to make an operator's profit for the year become negative.

 

Rising costs are the main reason for the increase in 5G package tariffs. For price-sensitive and some users, they are more willing to use 4G networks than 5G networks that are expensive and have little improvement. The bearer network needs large-scale expansion Theoretically, 4G speed can reach 100mbps, but in fact it cannot reach this speed. Because there are too many users, the bearer network will not be able to handle such a large traffic demand. The user's general speed is between 30-80mbps. If only 4G base stations are replaced with 5G base stations without large-scale expansion and transformation of the bearer network and backbone network, the rate of 5G will be consistent with that of 4G. In this way, the only advantages of 5G will be lost. live.

 

The speed has not changed, and users are even more insensitive to 5G. 5G ecosystem The 5G ecosystem is the main reason why users are currently indifferent to 5G. In the early stage of 5G promotion, many people believed that it would bring new possibilities to technologies such as VR, autonomous driving, and AI. However, to this day, we have found that 5G's support for these industries is very limited. Autonomous driving does not rely on the network, but on the computer in the car, because if the network signal is poor, the car will not be able to drive, so the safety of autonomous driving cannot be guaranteed. Because of the bandwidth and line from the base station to the server, there is no difference between 5G and 4G, and the low latency of 5G will not qualitatively fly. As for the so-called watching 4K and 8K videos, the power consumption becomes higher, not to mention that the video with such a resolution has already exceeded the range that the human eye can perceive. At present, we don't have much feeling about 5G, does it mean that 5G is useless at all? Xiao Wei couldn't help but think of the topic of "Meta Universe" during this period. Is "Meta Universe" the future? Of course, any company can position itself as its strategic goal of creating "Meta Universe". However, due to capital hype, major media and platforms abuse the concept of meta universe for profit, making meta universe drift away. Around 2019, 5G was hyped up. In fact, the effect of 5G was much lower than expected, which made many people think that 5G is a scam. What does 4G bring? Short videos and various personal webcasts appeared when the 4G penetration rate was relatively high. The current penetration rate of 5G is still relatively low, and it will hardly bring new features. In other words, it is just an upgraded version of 4G, nothing more. Just as autonomous driving replaces manual driving and artificial intelligence replaces human labor, 5G will surely replace 4G, but the road to completely replace 4G is still far away. Putting aside unrealistic illusions, being down-to-earth and treating 5G calmly, can we give it one. Bright future, rather than let it become a tool for cutting leeks. Hongmeng official strategic cooperation and co-construction-HarmonyOS technology community 【Editor in charge: Zhao Ningning TEL: (010) 68476606】