Why is the 5G investment huge, the final experience does not feel much different from the 4G?

2022.02.14

Many people say that the reason why the current 5G does not feel much is because the speed is not fast enough, and when the speed reaches how much in the future, 5G will be able to show its prowess. This idea, completely wrong reality needs. The bottleneck of mobile Internet is not "faster speed" ah. Take the car, for example, in the early stages, the maximum speed of the car from 20 to 50, from 50 to 100, and then from 100 to 200, which are meaningful. But the maximum speed of civilian cars to 200, and then invest a lot of resources to continue to raise the upper limit of the speed of civilian cars, to develop the maximum speed of 300km / h cars, what is the point? This time, the direction of research and development of car manufacturers is: energy saving, safety, comfort and functional improvement. There will not be a simple car factory thinking about developing a "faster" car to impress consumers. Digital mobile communications, from 2G all the way up to 4G, the core indicator is indeed the increase in bandwidth, giving many people the false impression that bandwidth is the only indicator of mobile communications technology. The linear extrapolation mindset has led to an increase in speed at all costs in research and development. And then, to 5G, finally ate the Yakuza. The demand side found that faster speed, for me, is a pseudo-demand. What is the real demand? It is to improve stability with no change in bandwidth, while lower energy consumption, wider coverage, so that the construction cost and lower cost of use. Unfortunately, 5G, and the above needs completely contrary to the way. And when we think about this point, hundreds of billions of investment went down ...... A friend said: I now even open the picture of the news page are hard, that the network speed is not fast enough. Therefore, it is necessary to improve the speed of the network, we should build 5G. This logic is problematic. Because the smooth opening of pictures in 3G technical conditions will be sufficient. You do not need to build 5G at all to open the picture fast enough, but should improve the existing 4G network. This is like driving an Audi on the highway, the speed is only a poor 20km/h. At this time, you think you can change a car can drive to 350km/h F1, can solve the problem. Many people mentioned the value and cost of research and development and exploration. I couldn't agree more. China used to follow the strategy, as the saying goes, and crossed the river by feeling the eagle sauce. As long as the research and development is successful, we can use it directly. But with the improvement of China's overall strength, China's research and development in some areas actually accidentally went ahead of the eagle sauce. This time there will be the cost of trial and error. My attitude is clear: the cost of trial and error in the process of research and development is inevitable, and not without value. Even if the wrong technology tree or finally found that the road does not work, are not a big deal, and can even be said to be a good thing. But mass production, is a different nature of the problem. Because, the value of R&D is largely the R&D itself, while the value of mass production is the end use, and mass production takes up too much resources, too much higher than R&D. We can take a wrong turn in the R&D process and fail. But if the mass production only after the discovery of the wrong, the production of a large number of worthless products, the price is too big! Some people say that it takes time for new applications to emerge, and new applications in the 3G/4G era do not emerge quickly. I take a typical 4G application as an example, live video. In December 2013, China released 4G license. By the end of 2015, the monthly active users reached 10 million, and in the second year of 2016, the revenue reached 4.3 billion and the profit was 570 million. In other words, when the 4G license was released exactly two years ago, the monthly activity number of one company in the video live track could already reach 10 million. In October 2016, less than three years after the release of the 4G license, the number of monthly active users of the screeners reached 30 million, and the number of registered users exceeded 100 million. The 5G license will be released in June 2019, which is almost 3 years today, where are the 5G applications? How much longer do we have to wait? Lastly, I would like to add an expert's speech for your reference. 5G has been politicized and its capabilities have been exaggerated. "I once attended a 5G conference, and I, who had been involved in 5G for 10 years, couldn't understand what they were saying about 5G, and later found out that everyone was talking about the 5G era, not 5G. The expert believes that the evolution of 4G to 5G is not much different from the evolution of 3G to 4G. 5G will of course be better than 4G, but not as powerful as we now imagine. For example, there is no 5G and 5.5G, can the car achieve automatic driving? The expert believes that the car to achieve automatic driving, we must realize the autonomous automatic driving. The actual fact is that you can't be able to get a lot of money from the outside world. If the car must rely on 5G and 5.5G in order to drive automatically, then what to do after the network is disconnected, the requirements of the operator is also very high, not realistic. "The "5G and 5.5G are of course better for the realization of automatic driving, but more is the auxiliary. The actual fact is that you can find a lot of people who are not able to get to the top of the list. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)