Diversified layout of operators, 5G small base stations usher in "spring"

5G small base station collection is coming. Recently, from the official website of China Telecom, China Telecom decided to start the 2022 China Telecom 5G extended small base station equipment technical test, the test results will be used for China Telecom 2022 5G extended small base station product centralized procurement link. The announcement also said that the 5G extended small base station participating in the test is composed of a three-level architecture of host unit, expansion unit and remote unit, including two models of 5G single-mode expansion small base station and 5G dual-mode expansion small base station.

In the new year, with the large-scale deployment of 5G base stations, continuous expansion and improvement of network coverage, enriching 5G application scenarios has become the focus. There is no doubt that the spark of 5G small base stations will light up the hidden corners of indoor coverage, and will also ignite hundreds of vertical industries. It is reported that at present, the three major operators and equipment manufacturers are increasing the deployment of small base stations, and with the strengthening of 5G coverage in depth and breadth, small base stations may usher in a big era.

Indoor coverage is king,

The market space for 5G small base stations is huge

Nowadays, the construction of 5G macro stations can be said to be a large-scale deployment, and some experts predicted that more than 80% of the traffic of 5G will occur indoors. Therefore, starting from 2022, 5G will focus on the construction of indoor base stations. This means that the market opportunity for small cell stations is gradually emerging.

Wei Leping, director of the China Telecom Science and Technology Commission, once pointed out that the application scenarios of small base stations in the 5G era include coverage and capacity. In terms of coverage, according to the upstream edge 3Mbps, 3.5G uplink is at least 9dB worse than 1.8G, indoor coverage is a big problem, small base stations are one of the way out; in terms of capacity, splitting macro stations into small stations is the most effective frequency reuse expansion method, and 1 belt (2-10) small base stations can be expanded by 2-10 times. Therefore, the 5G era of small cell towers will usher in a huge opportunity, the number of 5G small cell stations is expected to be tens of millions of orders of magnitude in the Chinese market.

Some professionals believe that in the long run, the scale of 5G small stations is far greater than the scale of 5G macro stations, and it is also far greater than the scale of DAS in the 4G era, conservative estimates, in the next few years, the market size of domestic 5G small stations may exceed 30 billion yuan.

Upcoming large-scale deployment,

Empower vertical industry markets

Judging from the current 5G small base station products on the market, major equipment manufacturers have launched their own products, such as Huawei's Lampsite, ZTE's Qcell, Ericsson's RDS, nokia's ASiR. Some other small and medium-sized equipment manufacturers have also launched their own products in a timely manner, such as New H3C's 5G cloud-based small base station, China Xinke's Pico, Ruijie Network's 5G cloud small station, Jingxin's 5G cloud small station, Baicaibang's 5G extended small base station and so on.

In the "emerging market" of 5G small base stations, no one is far behind, and operators are naturally the same. At present, the three major operators are working intensively to accelerate the layout of 5G small base stations. For example, China Telecom actively explores solutions to achieve indoor coverage with the low-cost advantage of white box small base stations; China Mobile proposes a fusion room sub-scheme in the 5G era; China Unicom promotes digital room sub-innovation, and plans different forms of digital room sub-products for different forms of scenes to form a differentiated deployment. With the active deployment of major equipment manufacturers and operators, small base stations are bound to usher in a period of large-scale development. Compared with 4G small base stations, 5G skin expansion small base stations plan diversified products such as 2T2R/4T4R, 5G single-mode/4G+5G dual-mode in the face of more scenarios, and at the same time have the ability to split the cell, which can gradually expand from low-capacity scenarios to high-capacity scenarios such as hospitals and manufacturers. At the same time, 5G small stations support multi-service convergence and cloud virtualization, etc., with the gradual clarification of vertical industry needs, small base stations with simple deployment and flexible expansion will become an important solution for industry networks.

Commercialization still faces challenges,

It is urgent to coordinate the upstream, middle and downstream of the industrial chain

Undoubtedly, entering the operator collection is of great benefit to the development of 5G small base station related industries. The sustainability of operator collection can further activate the upstream and downstream industrial chains, make the ecology of small base stations more healthy and prosperous, and thus provide operators with richer and more cost-effective network construction solutions.

However, it cannot be denied that for commercial deployment, there are still many problems and challenges in the technical capabilities, costs, maturity and other aspects of 5G small stations. Contrary to the demand for digital room sub-products in the public network and the industry, the current small base station industry chain as a whole presents the rugby-type characteristics of "thick in the middle and thin on both sides", and most of the industrial resources are concentrated in the system and equipment integration links in the midstream, and the chip industry investment in the upstream of the industrial chain is slightly insufficient, and the solution is relatively single.

Therefore, in the subsequent development process, 5G small base stations should further improve product maturity, pioneering and innovative, improve network performance, reduce construction costs, attach importance to deployment and operation and maintenance issues, provide the best solutions while reflecting the best cost performance, and fully balance the upstream and downstream industry chains, build a more solid foundation for landing commercialization, and achieve value win-win results with operators and industrial ecological chains.