Image source: Oriental IC
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In early 2012, in Kansas City in the Midwest, Google broke ground here by laying its ultra-high-speed fiber optic backbone network. A few months later, some of the residents here became the first users of Google Fiber Gigabit broadband. This is the beginning of the global gigabit broadband scale commercialization, since then, the United States AT&T, South Korea KT and other operators have successively launched gigabit broadband popularization plans.
However, the development process of gigabit broadband is not smooth, under the huge pressure of high cost and low output, Google had to abandon the Google Fiber project in 2016, even in China, gigabit broadband has not been able to win the "favor" of users for four or five years after large-scale commercialization, and the user scale has grown slowly.
Today, the development of global gigabit broadband has gone through a decade, and China's gigabit broadband has ushered in a "singularity", and the window is opening.
01
After years of dormancy, the singularity appeared
In 2015, Shanghai, Nanjing, Chengdu, Wuxi and other cities in China began to pilot gigabit fiber broadband, and set up gigabit broadband demonstration communities. On this basis, in 2016, telecom operators in Shanghai, Guangdong and other places took the lead in launching gigabit broadband commercial services, and the scale development of gigabit broadband in the mainland set sail.
But all along, the development speed of domestic gigabit broadband has not been fast, or relatively slow. Until the end of 2020, the overall scale of gigabit users in the mainland reached 6.4 million, and the scale of internet broadband access users in the mainland was 483.55 million in the same period, that is to say, after four or five years of development, the proportion of gigabit broadband users in the mainland by the end of 2020 was only 1.3%. That's even lower than the global average, where 2 percent of broadband subscribers signed up for gigabit broadband services in 2020, according to market research firm Omdia.
The past 2021 can be called a turning point in the development of gigabit broadband in the mainland, and after many years of dormancy, it has entered a rapid development channel, and the speed is beyond expectations.
How fast is it? In March 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced the "Action Plan for the Coordinated Development of "Double Gigabit" Networks (2021-2023) (the "Action Plan"), which sets the first phase of the goal: by the end of 2021, the number of Gigabit broadband users will exceed 10 million. Unexpectedly, in April 2021, the second month after the release of this action plan, the number of gigabit broadband users in the mainland exceeded 10 million to 10.94 million. It is rare to accomplish the goal so quickly.
The magic continues! The second phase of the Action Plan is to exceed 30 million Gigabit broadband subscribers. This goal was not only achieved ahead of schedule, but also more than two years ahead of schedule. According to the data, at the end of October 2021, the number of gigabit broadband users on the mainland reached 25.25 million, while in November, the net increase of 8.61 million in a single month reached 33.86 million gigabit users by the end of November, accounting for 6.3% of broadband users.
At present, the gigabit broadband user development data for December 2021 has not yet been released, but from the first 11 months of 2021, the mainland gigabit broadband has developed rapidly in 2021, and the user increase in these 11 months (27.46 million households) is 4.3 times the sum of the user development in the past few years (6.4 million households).
From another perspective, from January to November 2021, the mainland increased by 51.85 million broadband users, and in the same period, the net increase of Gigabit broadband users increased by 27.46 million, accounting for 52.96% of the net increase in broadband users. That said, more than half of all users are now opting for gigabit broadband.
02
The development "window" opens
In 2021, the domestic gigabit broadband market is developing rapidly, and the scale of users is rapidly increasing, and industry insiders believe that this has sent a clear signal: the "window period" for the development of the mainland gigabit broadband market has emerged.
It's like 2015 for IPTV, very similar. Before 2015, IPTV, which had been developing in China for about a decade, had been tepid, but it ushered in an inflection point in 2015, and was in a rapid development channel in the following years.
Researchers from the China Telecommunications Research Institute believe that the reasons for the emergence of the "window period" of the gigabit broadband market are divided into two aspects: the external environment and internal factors, which can be summarized as the gradual maturity of national strategic support and gigabit network-related technologies, and the internal factors can be summarized as the active participation of operators and the transformation of user demand.
The first is policy promotion. In 2015, the domestic IPTV business began to develop greatly, which is closely related to the No. 65 document issued by the State Council to accelerate the comprehensive promotion of the integration of the three networks in the country. In 2021, gigabit broadband will begin to develop greatly, which is also related to the active promotion of policies. In the 2021 "two sessions" government work report, it is clearly stated that it is necessary to "increase the construction of 5G networks and gigabit optical networks and enrich application scenarios". In March 2021, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Action Plan for the Coordinated Development of Dual Gigabit Networks, which sets goals and formulates measures for the development of Gigabit broadband.
Secondly, with the updating and iteration of technology and the maturity of network access supporting facilities, conditions are provided for the popularization of the gigabit broadband market.
In fact, as early as 2014, there were private broadband operators in China who launched gigabit broadband, but they have been in a pilot state and have no scale promotion, because the use of 1G PON technology does not have the conditions for scale promotion from the cost point of view. Even Google Fiber, which uses 2.5G PON technology, makes it impossible to effectively reduce costs. The 10G PON technology commonly adopted by mainland operators is conducive to gigabit broadband scale deployment.
Moreover, telecom operators are also constantly lowering the threshold of gigabit broadband, while constantly enriching the scene applications of gigabit broadband, such as 4K/8K high-definition video entertainment, AR/VR and other personalized home scenes, coupled with fixed-mobile integration packages, through the "mobile connection + fixed network + application" product form to quickly spread the market.
03
The drama is yet to come
2021 ushered in an inflection point, and the scale of gigabit broadband on the mainland will undoubtedly increase rapidly in 2022.
Market research firms are very optimistic about the development of fiber optic broadband and gigabit broadband in China, and a report released by Omdia in December 2021 showed that "by the end of 2020, the number of optical fiber network users worldwide will be less than 620 million, but we expect this number to increase to 719 million in 2022." Most of this fiber user growth will occur in the Chinese market. ”
Image source: Omdia
Omdia also expects the number of gigabit broadband subscribers worldwide to more than double the size of the contract by the end of 2020. That's because, as we head into its third year of the COVID-19 pandemic, the pandemic continues to spur demand for high-speed broadband everywhere, from remote work and education to telemedicine and safe entertainment.
The report said that the number of 500 Mbit/s-1 Gbit/s broadband subscribers will increase from 15% in 2020 to 21% in 2022, and it is expected that by 2026, 17% of broadband users will reach speeds above 1 Gbit/s.
Clearly, China has higher goals.
In the 14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy issued by the State Council in January 2022, it is expected that the number of Gigabit broadband users in mainland China will reach 60 million by 2025. Judging from the current development situation, the actual user scale will far exceed this.
Source: State Council
Operators are also continuing to exert efforts, such as Shanghai Telecom, which took the lead in carrying out gigabit broadband scale commercialization in China, announced the launch of the eleventh round of broadband acceleration at the digital life festival conference held in November last year, promoting gigabit speed increase and increasing the scale of gigabit users on a large scale. According to the target set by Shanghai Telecom, its 1000M broadband subscribers are expected to reach 40% by the end of 2022, which will far exceed the global and national averages.
Author/IT Times reporter Qian Lifu
Editor/Qian Lifu Kicked Sister
Typography/Ji Jiaying
Photo/ State Department Omdia Oriental IC
Source/IT Times public account vittimes
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