The author | fanfan
Source| Jiguo Editorial Department
This year is the third year of 5G commercialization in China. Since the three major operators obtained 5G licenses on June 6, 2019, mainland 5G commercialization has made an important breakthrough, and by the end of last year, the number of 5G end users in China exceeded 518 million, of which the number of 5G network users reached 355 million.
Saying... 5G has been commercialized for so long, what is the level of 5G in China now?
A few days ago, the China Telecom Research Institute released a 5G user network perception quality evaluation report, which conducted a large number of sample tests for 5G users in 38 cities across the country using VoLTE voice and Internet access in the third to fourth quarter of 2021, as well as WeChat, Douyin video, Tencent video, HD video, King of Glory and other Internet applications.
The sample test mainly selected 9 scenarios for daily travel, such as urban trunk roads, business circles, office buildings, administrative institutions, cultural centers, high-density residential areas, subway lines, ring highways and airport high-speeds, high-speed rail stations and high-speed rail lines. The test mileage exceeded 30,000 kilometers, and the total sampling volume exceeded 150 million.
Judging from the sample test conclusions, the current perceived quality of 5G users is not ideal. Out of 100 points, the final overall score is 89.3. Among them, the 5G network coverage score was 80.4, the basic business score was 97.2, and the Internet application (WeChat, Douyin video, games, etc.) scored 93.2.
In addition, from the perspective of 5G network coverage in different regions analyzed by the report, the 5G coverage rate of urban trunk roads and outdoor scenes is the highest, reaching about 90%, while the indoor coverage rate is only 60%, and the gap between the two is large. In addition, in remote places such as the Ring Expressway, Airport Expressway, and subway lines, the 5G coverage rate is about 50%; in underground parking lots, elevators, stairs and other areas, the 5G coverage rate is less than 50%; the lowest 5G coverage rate is along the high-speed rail line, only about 10%.
From this report, we can see that the use of 5G users is not high, and the 5G coverage is also limited, and the overall needs to be strengthened.
Many users believe that the 5G signal is a bit poor and needs to be re-optimized. There are even those who think that 4G is completely sufficient and that 5G is not needed much.
In the "5G is not good to use" vote created by netizens, the number of votes that are not easy to use is obviously won.
Why has 5G been commercial for so long, and the user experience is still very poor?
Speaking of this, many people may think that operators are "lazy". In fact, in order to accelerate the pace of commercial 5G, operators have long been fully prepared.
The first is the construction of the basic 5G base station. China began to build 5G network base stations at the end of 2019, and more than 130,000 5G base stations were built nationwide.
With the in-depth advancement of 5G construction, 2020 is a year of explosive growth of 5G base stations.
In 2020, the mainland will add 580,000 new 5G base stations, and promote the joint construction and sharing of 330,000 5G base stations.
By the end of 2020, more than 718,000 5G base stations will be built on the mainland, achieving 5G coverage in all prefecture-level cities.
Compared with 2019, in 2020, the number of 5G base stations has increased by more than 5 times.
By 2021, the scale of 5G in mainland China will continue to increase. In November 2021, more than 1.39 million 5G base stations were built and opened in mainland China.
By the end of 2021, 1.425 million 5G base stations have been completed and opened, and more than 650,000 new 5G base stations have been built throughout the year.
According to the official data released, the total number of 5G base stations accounts for more than 60% of the world, and the 5G network has covered all prefecture-level urban areas, more than 98% of county urban areas and 80% of townships and towns.
this... It's not enough.
On March 8 this year, in the second "Ministerial Channel" interview held at the fifth session of the 13th National People's Congress, Xiao Yaqing, minister of industry and information technology, introduced that the total number of 5G base stations in the mainland has exceeded 1.425 million, and this year strives to exceed 2 million.
In addition to the construction of base stations, communication equipment 5G mobile phones are also accelerating online.
Thanks to the significant acceleration of the 5G commercial process, 5G mobile phones began to rush to the market rapidly, and the cumulative shipment of domestic 5G mobile phones exceeded 116 million units in 2019.
By 2020, the shipments of 5G mobile phones of major mobile phone manufacturers have increased against the trend.
According to the "2020 Q3 5G Mobile Phone Manufacturer Share" report released by the authoritative data agency IDC, the shipment of 5G mobile phones in the domestic market is about 49.7 million units. Among them, Huawei occupies the first place with a 5G market share of 56.6%, followed by OPPO, vivo, xiaomi, and realme, ranking second, third, fourth, and fifth respectively.
In the whole year of 2021, 5G mobile phone shipments were 266 million units, an increase of 63.5% year-on-year.
Among them, the shipment volume in November was 28.967 million units, accounting for 82.2% of the mobile phone shipments in the same period, which can be said to be the milestone of 5G mobile phone shipments exceeding 80% for the first time!
At present, domestic 5G mobile phones are mainly from Huawei, Xiaomi, OnePlus, Honor and other mobile phone manufacturers.
Huawei was earlier the manufacturer with the largest number of 5G mobile phones, with more than ten 5G mobile phones launched a year, with prices ranging from 2399 yuan to more than 10,000 yuan.
5G mobile phones have been released one after another, which has greatly promoted the replacement tide of domestic 5G mobile phones. At the same time, for operators, improving the penetration rate of 5G users has become the main task at present.
According to the data released by the three major operators, by the end of 2021, the number of mobile phone users nationwide will reach 1.646 billion, and the total number of 5G package users will be nearly 730 million.
In 2021, China Unicom's 5G package user data ▲
In order to attract consumers to upgrade 5G packages, operators have also designed many "solutions".
When the 5G network was just starting commercial, users were required to apply for 5G packages, but the package fees launched by the three major operators were all 3 digits, and the average month would be charged 300 yuan. The mobile phone package alone costs 300 yuan a month and 3600 yuan a year.
Due to the high price of 5G packages, most users are not willing to spend more money, so they simply turn off the 5G in their hands and continue to use 4G networks.
In addition to allowing 5G mobile phone users to use 5G packages, operators have also started the idea of 4G mobile phone users, that is, directly opening 5G services for users' 4G mobile phone cards.
Everyone noticed that mobile phones often receive sales calls and text messages from operators, and exhaust various means to allow users to transfer to 5G, such as discounted 5G packages and cheap 5G upgrade traffic packages.
In addition to the phone text message bombardment, there is also the "speed limit", limiting the speed of the 4G network, in order to force everyone to upgrade 5G, which makes many consumers miserable.
Users who are willing to upgrade 5G, under the 5G base station network, all the calling cards that can be used normally on 5G mobile phones, no matter what type of package, can enjoy 5G signals and high speeds.
Earlier, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications @ He students because of the test of their own test of the school's 5G network video, the popular network. In the video, the average file download rate is around 700Mbps, which is almost ten times that of 4G. Mobile phone software, the download speed is more than the decompression speed.
This video shows you the "general speed" of 5G.
but... The feelings of He alone do not represent all 5G users. From the perspective of most people's experience, the 5G experience is not as strong as 4G, loading pictures is slow, watching videos, playing games network Caton.
There are even unstable network signals, especially in elevators, there is basically no signal, and the 5G network is sometimes 10m, sometimes less than 1m...
The city is stronger, and the countryside is even more miserable. According to a netizen who complained, in the old hometown and friends on the phone, the voice is intermittent, the experience is very bad.
In addition, there will be a situation where the signal is very good, but there is no network, but it is good to switch back to 4G.
All in all, from everyone's actual experience, 5G networks seem to have less of a good sense of use.
Here is a question: why is the country vigorously building 5G base stations, but the user's 5G experience is still not powerful?
As mentioned earlier, some netizens are slow to load pictures and videos when using 5G, which is actually a poor signal.
At present, 5G base stations are under construction in large quantities, but we have to admit that the number is still insufficient and cannot achieve full coverage. In the case of cities, outdoor and aboveground indoor environmental signals are indeed no problem, but in indoor closures such as subways and underground garages, the signal coverage is seriously insufficient.
Therefore, we often encounter that there is no speed in the signal, and we must manually turn off 5G with 4G. The indoor and outdoor experience is completely different, with the signal swinging outdoors and the indoor signal largely disappearing. That is to say, users in the coverage area can only use 5G outdoors.
This means that with only outdoor base stations, it is difficult for 5G to complete the coverage of indoor signals. Indoor equipment (5G indoor micro base stations) is also required to distribute the signal relatively evenly indoors.
However, from the perspective of actual effect, it may not be of much effect. Because the outdoor tower strength is larger than the indoor one, the mobile phone chooses the signal tower communication instead of the indoor point.
However, the signal tower 5G communication is very slow, so the Internet is slow, and the signal strength of the indoor point cannot be increased, so there is no way to change this situation unless the signal tower is demolished.
Another conundrum is that indoor micro-base stations cost a lot of money, but many buildings and businesses are reluctant to spend money. In addition, the current mainstream population is still dominated by 4G, so many regions will not consider the problem of micro base stations for a small number of 5G users.
For these reasons, the experience of 5G users has naturally declined. There are even many people who choose to switch back to 4G. Even so, 5G is still the trend of the future. However, how to replace the current 4G with 5G will take a while!
Therefore, whether the network you are using now is 5G or 4G, welcome to leave a message in the comment area to discuss ~