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Wen丨 Lei Technology leitech
On February 21, the three major operators released the latest user data, and the total number of 5G package users of mobile Unicom Telecom exceeded 750 million. According to the data released earlier by the Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in January, the domestic market 5G mobile phone shipments were 26.324 million units, accounting for 79.7% of the mobile phone shipments in the same period.
These two data show that we have entered the 5G era, and the popularity of 5G is far beyond the imagination of many people. At the same time that 5G is gradually becoming mainstream, operators are also accelerating the elimination of relatively backward network facilities, both at home and abroad.
A few days ago, THE US operator AT&T announced the official closure of the WCDMA network in the United States, T-Mobile will shut down the CDMA network on March 31 and the WCDMA network by July 1; Verizon plans to shut down the CDMA network on December 31. That is to say, the three major operators in the United States will complete the full withdrawal of 3G networks this year. In fact, the three major domestic operators have also been retiring and eliminating 3G networks, using the vacated frequency bands for 5G, and 4G and 5G will become the backbone networks in our daily lives in the future.
Mobile: 3G has been cleaned up in advance, and 2G is also fast
China Mobile is the strongest of the domestic operators, both in terms of the number of users and revenue and profits, which are strongly compared to the other two. However, when it comes to retiring obsolete networks, mobile has a heavier historical baggage. We all know that in the 3G era, mobile has obtained a TD SCDMA license, and the network quality, actual experience and terminal support are far weaker than Unicom's WCDMA and Telecom's CDMA. Therefore, mobile preemptively completed the deployment of 4G networks, and in the 4G era, it began to retire 3G networks.
As early as January 2019, the Fuzhou Municipal Radio Administration sent a letter to Fuzhou Mobile saying that it agreed to cancel 6535 TD-SCDMA base stations. This means that Fuzhou Mobile officially completed the 3G network withdrawal at that time, and the TD-SCDMA clearance work was also made public. China Mobile's move to purge the 3G network is not limited to Fuzhou, but is fully rolled out nationwide.
Of course, in order to alleviate the negative impact of 3G network retirement, Mobile has done a lot of supporting work. On the one hand, mobile has been vigorously popularizing VoLTE, achieving full deployment as early as 2017, two or three years ahead of China Unicom. The full popularity of VoLTE allows users to receive calls under the use of 4G networks without being downgraded to a 2/3G network.
On the other hand, the 2G network with comprehensive mobile signal coverage can be retained, as a supplement to the non-VoLTE scenario, the GSM network is not enough to use the Internet access, but the problem of carrying voice services is not large.
After entering the 5G era, the progress of mobile is still very rapid. As of November 2021, the number of mobile 5G base stations reached 560,000, accounting for more than 70% of the world's total. In addition, not long ago, according to the netizens of the Communication People's Home, in some rural areas, mobile has achieved VoNR coverage in the N41 band. This means that mobile users can now use 5G networks without dropping network calls, and the role of 2G networks is further weakened.
In February, 51CTO reported that China Mobile had gradually withdrawn its 2G network in Chongqing, and from March 1, the 2G function of new users will be restricted. As for the low-speed scenarios related to IoT products, the solution given by Mobile is to apply for NB-IoT/Cat.1 packages, which will no longer be carried through the GSM network. Mobile now clears the 2G network can be said to be a natural success, the 5G network is comprehensively promoting and covering, and 4G has been highly mature. Shutting down the 2G GSM network can free up a large number of high-quality low-frequency bands and provide more support in expanding 5G coverage.
Telecom: Say goodbye to CDMA thoroughly
As mentioned earlier, the telecom 3G era is a CDMA license, although it is much better than the mobile TD SCDMA in all aspects, but it is still not as good as Unicom's WCDMA. CDMA is Qualcomm's own patent, the use of CDMA terminals to Qualcomm to pay a licensing fee, telecommunications also invested a lot in this regard. In addition, in the 3G era, many mobile phones do not support CDMA, which makes telecom lose a lot of users. When 4G gradually became widespread and will enter the 5G era, Telecom regarded CDMA as a negative asset and began a series of measures.
In 2019, Lei Technology reported that the Redmi K30 5G was complained about by some netizens because it did not support the CDMA standard. In fact, this accusation is actually wronged by Xiaomi, and not supporting CDMA is required by telecoms. China Telecom's terminal access requirements read, "5G terminals are not allowed to exist CDMA mode." Telecom also requires that mobile phones cannot support VoLTE switching, which should be to prevent users from turning off calls after they need to be downgraded to a CDMA network. Of course, telecoms dare to ask for this, but also because the deployment of VoLTE is basically realized.
In June 2020, a document inside Telecom was re-exposed on the Internet. According to the contents of the document, from June 1, 2020, the 3G-EVDO data service will be gradually shut down. The iPhone 13 series released in 2021, the Bank of China edition has also quietly removed support for CDMA, which should be the first Apple mobile phone in recent years that does not support telecom 2/3G networks.
Unicom: Still inseparable from WCDMA
We all know that China Unicom is the weakest of the three major operators. Perhaps it is precisely because of this that Unicom has obtained the best WCDMA license in the 3G era. Xiao Lei used the 3G services of the three major operators at that time, the comprehensive experience of Unicom is the best, under the WCDMA network, the fastest download speed can exceed 1MB/s, almost touching the threshold of 4G. Moreover, at that time, most of the 3G mobile phones on the market supported the WCDMA standard, including overseas versions of mobile phones. At the same time, with the help of the WCDMA system, Unicom has achieved good 3G network coverage, and has also rubbed a wave of iPhone traffic through cooperation with Apple, taking the opportunity to expand its influence.
However, after entering the 4G era, Unicom's weak financial resources have some difficulties in 4G investment with soaring costs. Even now, when Xiaolei encounters 4G network congestion with Unicom card, switching 3G networks will often have a better experience. Therefore, the WCDMA network has become the best complement to Unicom's 4G era, and the downgrading of voice calls to 3G will not cause a significant deterioration in the experience. Perhaps because of this, China Unicom was not particularly active in promoting VoLTE, and it was not fully opened until 2019, and the iPhone was not supported until the end of that year.
Therefore, Unicom, which is more active in clearing out the 2G network, is not eager to say goodbye to the 3G network. Miao Shouye, head of China Unicom's 5G Co-construction and Sharing Working Group, said at the end of 2020 that Unicom's goal is to "first reduce the 1-carrier frequency by the end of 3G, accelerate the development of VoLTE to replace 3G voice, promote 3G to gradually retire the network, and finally form a simplified target network with 4G +5G coordination." In the long run, China Unicom will completely retire the 3G network, but Xiaolei's process will be relatively long, at least much longer than mobile telecom.
What impact does it have on us?
To be honest, readers who can see here are most likely loyal users of Lei Technology, and it is likely that they know more about these fields of technology and digital, and the equipment they use is naturally unlikely to be a product that only supports 3G. However, if we broaden the perspective a little wider, we can see more user groups. Regarding the current number of 2G and 3G users, we can't find an accurate data for the time being. However, the previous data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology can be used as a reference, as of the end of May 2020, the number of domestic 2G users is about 200 million, and the number of 3G users is estimated to have a similar user scale.
And if this group of users want to minimize the negative impact of 2/3G network retirement on themselves, the best way is naturally to upgrade the equipment in their hands. In fact, now the price threshold of 5G mobile phones has dropped again and again, there are many 5G mobile phones of about a thousand yuan, and the price of 4G mobile phones has reached a very low level, and now there are very few mobile phones on the market that only support 3G or 2G, and more are the stock products sold before.
Compared with these "minority" users, more small partners may be afraid of places where 4G and 5G networks cannot cover, and if they pay off the 2/3G network, they will be in a state of disconnection. In fact, this point does not have to worry too much, now the number of 4G base stations has been very large, the signal coverage is also quite complete, no signal no network generally only appears in a very small number of cases.
Whether it is domestic or overseas, with the gradual arrival of the 5G era, the 2/3G network, which is relatively backward in technology and inferior in experience, will naturally launch the historical stage. The spectrum they vacate will not be wasted, but will be used on the network to update the standard.
Say goodbye to 3G and move the mobile Internet to the next generation
Looking back at the past ten years, we can feel that the iterative update of mobile communication technology is closely related to the development stage of mobile Internet. The highly mature 4G network brings us into the era of short video. The opening of the 3G era has directly promoted the arrival of the mobile Internet.
3G network, allowing users to access the Internet anytime and anywhere from science fiction to reality, so that the content carried on mobile phones from monotonous plain text to rich media information, but also to provide soil for the emergence of a large number of Apps.
At the beginning of 2009, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued licenses to the three major operators, and China officially entered the 3G era. In the same year, the iPhone 3GS was released, and it was the second Apple phone to support 3G networks. In 2010, the number of Apple App Store applications in the following years, Android smartphones developed rapidly and popularized, and domestic mobile phone brands rose rapidly.
Looking back now, the network experience in the 3G era is not perfect, and the network speed of one or two hundred KB/s can only support the browsing of graphic content, and watching high-definition videos online is still a luxury. The price of traffic is not cheap, And WiFi and cache are the most familiar words for people at that time.
But the 3G era is also the beginning of our transition from the PC Internet to the mobile Internet, an unprecedented change. In this process, Nokia, the giant of the feature phone era, collapsed, Apple's new empire was established, Microsoft was defeated in repeated mistakes, and Google became a pole of the bipolar world.
The 3G era has given birth to the mobile Internet world, the 4G era has brought about the short video era, and the 5G era we are entering will also bring us new and unknown things.