To save 5G, start by canceling the pull-down of the 5G switch?

Recently, many users have discovered that the 5G signal shortcut switch in their mobile phones is missing. In this regard, Bruce Lee, president of Huawei's terminal product line, explained on the social media platform that removing the 5G pull-down shortcut switch is a unified requirement of China's three major operators, because the operators found that many users buy 5G mobile phones but turn off the 5G switch in use.

Recently, many users have discovered that the 5G signal shortcut switch in their mobile phones is missing. In this regard, Bruce Lee, president of Huawei's terminal product line, explained on the social media platform that removing the 5G pull-down shortcut switch is a unified requirement of China's three major operators, because the operators found that many users buy 5G mobile phones but turn off the 5G switch in use.

Not only does Huawei mobile phone cancel the 5G pull-down shortcut switch, looking at the mobile phones sold in the market, such as Xiaomi, OPPO, vivo, etc., there is no 5G shortcut switch anymore. Obviously, the requirements of operators mentioned by Huawei are basically true.

So the question arises, why do many consumers turn off the 5G network to use it even if they buy a 5G mobile phone?

The problem lies in 5G itself. For consumers, the greatest convenience brought by the 5G network is the increase in network speed. But other than that, there is almost no difference in other experiences from 4G. Not only that, after turning on 5G, for many users, there will even be a negative feedback.

For example, the increase in power consumption of mobile phones causes serious heat generation in mobile phones. Of course, this is mainly caused by the large bandwidth and multiple channels. In short, the communication pipes have become thicker and the water pipes have become more numerous, resulting in a significant increase in power consumption.

There is also the problem of the network itself. As the 5G network itself has not yet perfect coverage, it may face the problem of disconnection during use. In some scenarios, once the 5G signal is weak, it will cause the switching frequency of different systems to become higher. The imperfection of the above algorithm may cause the device to disconnect from the network directly, and the network must be switched again to connect.

At the same time, the surge in power consumption brought about by 5G is not only for users' mobile devices, but also for base stations. According to public statistics, the current power consumption of 5G base stations is about 3500W to 5000W. According to the calculation of industrial electricity consumption of 0.5 yuan/kWh, the annual photoelectric fee for each 5G base station needs to range from 15,330 yuan to 21,900 yuan, let alone today It also plans to increase the price of electricity, which means that a single base station will cost more than 50,000 yuan a year in the future.

According to statistics, by the end of 2020, more than 718,000 5G base stations have been opened, and in 2021, my country will build more than 600,000 5G base stations.

Calculating with 1.3 million 5G base stations means that in the future, operators will need to spend 65 billion yuan on electricity alone, which does not count the annual operation and maintenance costs of 5G base stations, and the construction costs of 5G base stations.

Therefore, many 5G base stations have adopted the intelligent base station mode, and some dynamically adjust the operating status according to the number of users. When there are too few users connected to the base station or there are no users, the base station will automatically reduce power consumption or turn off, and will automatically turn on when there are users connected, which can minimize power consumption.

Such a high cost, even the three major operators with deep pockets, cannot withstand it without income. How to increase income and let more users use 5G network is the most important part.

According to data recently released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of July this year, the number of 5G mobile phone terminal connections reached 392 million, a net increase of 193 million from the end of the previous year, a growth rate of nearly 100%.

But even so, operators still require mobile phone manufacturers to cancel the 5G shortcut switch in the drop-down menu. The reason is that Bruce Lee said that many users bought 5G mobile phones but turned off 5G. This has led to the growth of 5G users, but it has not actually brought more revenue to operators.

At the same time, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the Office of the Central Cyber ​​Security and Informatization Commission, the National Development and Reform Commission, the Ministry of Education, the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, the National Health Commission, and the State-owned State Council Ten departments including the Assets Supervision and Administration Commission and the National Energy Administration have recently jointly issued the "5G Application "Sailing" Action Plan (2021-2023)". There are quantitative requirements for the coverage of 5G terminal users, so operators have to do their best. Can increase the user's 5G usage.

At present, the cancellation of the pull-down of the 5G shortcut switch on the mobile phone is obviously an operation that the operators have taken to cultivate the user's habit of using 5G, but this method of changing the cost by increasing the cost is just a temporary solution rather than a permanent cure.

If you want to completely change the status quo of low 5G usage, you can only start with application scenarios, but now with the popularity of Wi-Fi, the scenarios that can use cellular networks are basically outdoors without Wi-Fi. However, the problem is that consumers have cultivated not to use high-traffic applications in outdoor scenarios without Wi-Fi, which weakens the current only high-speed advantage of 5G.

Only the launch of 5G killer applications can completely change this situation. However, it has been several years since the promotion of 5G, and the market is still discussing 5G applications. It can only prove that the exclusive application scenarios of 5G are either relatively small or difficult to find. This is true for the past cellular network technology. A whole new challenge.