Since the license was issued on June 6, 2019, my country’s 5G has gone through a four-year journey. Over the past four years, our country has made remarkable achievements in 5G network construction, application innovation, and user expansion. As of the end of April 2023, my country had 2.733 million 5G base stations and 634 million 5G mobile phone users, bringing significant economic benefits and social value to the high-quality development of all walks of life.

Despite the promising results, 5G to B problems such as limited industry coverage and slow scale replication are still prominent. After the 5G to B application has achieved a breakthrough from "0 to 1", the leap from "1 to N" is still difficult and long. . "5G to B applications cannot achieve the acceleration of quantitative changes and the sublimation of qualitative changes without the preferential support of policies." An operator believes.

High cost, prohibitive for small and medium-sized enterprises

As we all know, 5G private networks have the characteristics of high equipment costs and complex network operation and maintenance, which makes the cost-effectiveness unattractive and affects the willingness of enterprises to adopt 5G private networks to a certain extent. In addition, vertical industry demands are differentiated and fragmented, making it difficult for terminal equipment manufacturers to realize large-scale value and ensure profitability. The above issues have attracted widespread attention from all parties in the industry. In recent years, with the continuous innovation and breakthrough of my country's 5G key technologies, the comprehensive cost of 5G to B has continued to decrease. For example, the unit price of 5G modules has dropped from more than 2,000 yuan at the beginning of 5G commercialization to 400 to 500 yuan now.

Even so, compared with 4G modules that cost 100 to 200 yuan, the cost of 5G modules is still high. In addition, in terms of CPE, the unit price of 4G is 200 to 300 yuan, while the unit price of 5G is as high as 800 to 1,000 yuan. And this is just the price of one module. In a complex 5G private network, hundreds or thousands of modules, CPE, etc. may need to be deployed. In the end, the high cost of 5G private network has discouraged many small and medium-sized enterprises.

"The prices of industrial 5G chips, modules and gateways have shown a downward trend, but are still higher than the expectations of small and medium-sized enterprises. It is necessary to further improve the supply level of 5G industrial equipment and reduce costs." Tang, deputy director of the Technology and Standards Institute of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology Libo thinks. Liu Yuan, deputy general manager and senior expert of the 5G Private Network Product Department of China Mobile Internet of Things, also said that high hardware costs and few categories have become bottlenecks in the development of 5G to B.

Not long ago, Zhao Zhiguo, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, stated that a large-scale 5G application project will be implemented in 2023 to promote the in-depth development of industry applications. According to a senior industry expert, in order to promote the large-scale application of 5G, in addition to continuing to work on reducing 5G costs, the country also needs to favor policies and provide support to operators in terms of top-level design.

Policy tilt creates a positive circulation effect

"In order to effectively promote the construction of 5G private networks, the state can provide support in terms of assessment systems. For example, operators' 5G private network investment will not be included in the profit assessment to help operators reduce their burden and travel lightly. And the reduction of 5G private network costs, It is also conducive to reducing the cost of use for industry users, thereby forming a positive cycle effect and accelerating the scale development process of 5G to B." The aforementioned experts believe.

There is precedent for such a policy. For example, in order to encourage enterprises to increase investment in innovation, my country has deployed tax reduction policies to support enterprise innovation, deducting enterprise R&D expenses before tax, and encouraging enterprises to increase investment and enhance innovation capabilities. In 2022, my country will further increase corporate R&D tax reductions. For the current 75% pre-tax super deduction of R&D expenses, it will be uniformly increased to 100%, further increasing the enthusiasm of enterprises for R&D. Encouraged by policies, corporate innovation continues to increase.

my country’s 5G network construction investment is huge. According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, my country's 5G network investment will reach 184.9 billion yuan and 180.3 billion yuan respectively in 2021 and 2022. If the government reduces the burden of network construction on operators through policies such as tax reduction and exemption, it will provide important help in accelerating 5G to B.

In addition, building lightweight networks and moving to the 5G cloud are also feasible ways to reduce the cost of 5G to B. "The current 5G network is designed for public networks and often has excess capacity and is not suitable for the production needs of enterprises. Deploying lightweight equipment and providing services on demand can greatly improve the cost performance." Yang Guang, senior chief analyst at Omdia, gave an example. For a medium-sized For the park, being able to support 2,000 devices is enough to meet its needs. In addition, promoting 5G private network cloud and adopting on-demand expansion can also significantly reduce the cost of 5G private network. According to Alibaba’s experience, the ultra-lightweight 5G core network method is used to deploy 100 base stations for small and medium-sized enterprises and access 200 users. Compared with the traditional method, the overall cost is reduced by 70%.

I believe that in the end, with the support of policy preferences, technological innovation, etc., 5G to B can achieve cost reduction and complete "from 1 to N" scale replication.