The status quo of 5G and the new initiatives of the three major communication operators

Let’s look at the current status of 5G first: as of the end of June this year, China Mobile has opened 501,000 5G base stations, with an annual goal of over 700,000; China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and shared 460,000 5G base stations in use throughout the year. The target is also 700,000. The current 5G coverage covers all cities above the prefecture level in the country, and the number of 5G mobile phone terminal connections reaches 365 million, accounting for more than 80% of the world.

After entering 2021, our country’s 5G construction is not as enthusiastic as the previous two years. Of course, this is not an illusion. This can also be seen from the operating data for the first half of 2021 released by the three major communications operators. For example, in terms of investment volume, China Mobile completed 86 billion yuan of investment in the first half of this year, less than 15% less than the same period last year; China Telecom completed 31% of the planned investment, which is equivalent to 63% of the same period last year; China Unicom Completed 20.4% of the planned investment for the year. However, if you think that the progress of 5G construction has begun to slow down, it must be a big mistake. In fact, the three major communications operators have not changed their 5G investment plans for 2021, and it is likely that there will be less than four It will accelerate across the board within a few months.

Let’s look at the current status of 5G first: as of the end of June this year, China Mobile has opened 501,000 5G base stations, with an annual goal of over 700,000; China Telecom and China Unicom have jointly built and shared 460,000 5G base stations in use throughout the year. The target is also 700,000. The current 5G coverage covers all cities above the prefecture level in the country, and the number of 5G mobile phone terminal connections reaches 365 million, accounting for more than 80% of the world.

 

The progress of the 5G plan in 2021 is to advance the construction and application of 5G networks in an orderly manner, accelerate 5G coverage in major cities, promote joint construction and sharing, and build more than 600,000 5G base stations. However, in the first half of this year, the three major telecommunications operators built less than 200,000 5G base stations in total, so the remaining time is to build more than 400,000 more. The confirmation message received from China Radio and Television a few days ago is that the first bidding amount for the 700M 5G base station is 480,000, and 200,000 will be invested this year. This quota is exactly the number of China Mobile's annual plans minus the number of 5G base stations already built. Since the start of 5G construction, the progress of China Mobile and China Telecom and China Unicom Alliance’s 5G new construction has been basically the same. The remaining 200,000 base stations are basically China Telecom and China Unicom to build and share 5G base stations. For the remaining four months, the focus of China Mobile + China Radio and Television is in the 700MHz frequency band, and the focus of China Telecom + China Unicom is in the 2.1GHz frequency band, and they will all begin to build.

From the perspective of the scale of 5G users, the data confirmed by the three major telecom operators are: China Mobile has 251 million 5G package users, with a penetration rate of 26.5%; China Telecom has 131.15 million 5G package users, with a penetration rate Reached 36.2%; China Unicom's 5G package users are 113 million, and the penetration rate is 37%. In other words, the overall proportion of personal 5G users is about one-third, which means that there is still a lot of space for 5G commercial use.

 

In terms of specific 5G commercial initiatives, the three major communications operators have different targets. Among them, China Mobile focuses on 5G applications in industrial Internet, transportation, medical care, education and other fields; China Unicom focuses on industrial Internet, smart mining, smart medical, smart city and other key areas to support more than 15 5G industry applications; China Telecom has rapidly replicated a series of benchmarking projects for 5G applications in smart factories, mines, ports, power grids, and cities across the country.

In addition, the specific tactics of the three major communication operators are also different. China Mobile focuses on the reserve of 5G technology patents. It currently has more than 3,300 5G patents. In terms of number, it ranks first among global operators; China Telecom In the comprehensive creation of 5G + optical bandwidth + WiFi6 "three gigabit" high-quality pan-connected services; China Unicom is focusing on 5G + ABCDE (artificial intelligence, blockchain, cloud computing, big data, edge computing) integration and innovation differences Optimizing competitive advantage.

In summary, the slowing down of 5G construction is an inevitable result of industrial development. The current key goal is to accelerate the implementation of 5G innovative applications and cultivate 5G commercial cases. At the same time, it is also waiting for the further maturity of global 5G standards.