The most innovative operator provincial branch, Zhejiang Mobile has once again come to the forefront of the industry.
A few days ago, Zhejiang Mobile took the lead in announcing the large-scale commercial use of VoNR (Voice over New Radio), once again in the evolution and upgrading of 5G networks and services, and took the lead in fully entering the 5G SA (independent networking) era nationwide.
Some netizens not only asked, what is VoNR, why is it important, and what benefits will it bring to end users and operators? VoNR is commercialized on a large scale across the country, what barriers still need to be crossed?
What is VoNR?
Literally, VoNR solves The problem of Voice, which is the most traditional and basic carrier-grade service - voice, that is, phone calls. In the early days of 5G commercialization, the industry mainly provided voice services through VoLTE technology.
Why did LTE be used to provide voice services in the early days of 5G? Because, when designing the 5G system, 3GPP does not provide an independent solution for voice services, but uses IMS-based voice services. In the early days of 5G commercialization, there were two networking methods, NSA and SA, corresponding to three voice service implementation schemes - VoLTE, EPS Fallback, and VoNR.
VoLTE is mainly for NSA networking, NSA only introduced 5G NR RAN, but the core network still uses 4G EPC, voice services are still provided by 4G IMS/VoLTE network; EPS Fallback is mainly for SA networking, and the LTE era of CSFB is the same, in the 5G SA network can not cover the place, the voice service will fall back to the 4G network; VoNR is for SA networking, voice services are all carried by 5G, A better user experience can be obtained, but only if there is good SA coverage.
What will VoNR bring?
This should be analyzed from two dimensions, what does it bring to users and what does it bring to operators?
From the user side, VoNR allows users' voice and data services to be carried under the 5G base station, compared with VoLTE HD Voice in the 4G era, VoNR will bring users a better call experience:
Ultra-low call connection delay, second dial seconds to connect, dial can be seen;
Ultra-high sound quality, full support for EVS (Enhance Voice Services) codec, to create an ultra-high-definition voice call experience;
Ultra-clear image quality, with a resolution of up to 720p, is an order of magnitude higher than the 480p of VoLTE calls.
At the same time, there is no need to fall back to 4G and still enjoy 5G high-speed data services.
From the perspective of operators, the benefits are also obvious: confirming the new benchmark of experience and unlocking new value of carrier-grade services.
Affected by the impact of OTT, operators' voice services continue to decline. Taking China Mobile as an example, the revenue of voice services continued to show a downward trend, with the annual voice business revenue of 76.2 billion yuan, down 3.3% from the previous year, and the total number of call minutes decreased by 1.2% compared with the previous year.
VoLTE, which has high hopes in the 4G era, has not saved the trend of operator voice decline, and the fundamental reason is that VoLTE is difficult to provide a unique user experience. Voice/video calls under VoLTE are similar to the voice and video call services provided by Tencent, and WeChat is constantly optimizing the user experience. But VoNR is different, VoNR provides fast access, ultra-high sound and picture quality, and voice/data service concurrency capabilities, which are completely unmatched by WeChat.
The purpose of VoNR is to make consumers willing to use mobile phones to make calls and reoccupy the voice business market. Because, from 1G to the future of 6G, in any era, voice services will always be just needed, and carrier-grade services are to rely on experience to regain value.
Not only at the product/market level, but also at the network level, the popularity of VoNR will also help operators build simplified networks, reduce network complexity, and ultimately achieve "5G one network". This is similar to VoLTE, although VoLTE is not highly recognized by users, it helps operators release low- and medium-frequency spectrum resources; with the popularization of VoNR, more spectrum resources will be released, accelerating the migration of 4G networks to 5G, thereby reducing network operation and maintenance costs.
What other hurdles do you need to cross?
In the voice market, the core situation of operators lies in carrier-grade services and unique user experience, which can attract users. Taking history as a mirror, if VoNR wants to be recognized by users on a larger scale, it still needs to cross several thresholds.
The first is the tariff, the tariff design can not be isolated from the market, self-determination of the user, to avoid the rut of video calls in the 3G era. In the design of tariffs, it must be simple and transparent, rather than allowing consumers to do calculation problems.
In this regard, Zhejiang Mobile has set a good example. Since commercial days, Zhejiang Mobile's mobile phone packages, voice products and voice minutes in the virtual network can be used for domestic 5G VoNR ultra-clear video calls, and the family network has been upgraded from 39-person voice to 39-person video. After the excess, it is carried out according to the ordinary voice call tariff, and the traffic generated by 5G voice and video calls is exempt from the traffic fee. This is very simple and worth learning from other operators!
The second is the network, VoNR puts forward high requirements for the coverage and performance of 5G networks. From the perspective of wide coverage, only by achieving wide coverage can we move from EPS Fallback to VoNR; from the perspective of deep coverage, especially for indoor scenes, it is also necessary to have good coverage of 5G SA networks, and many voice services occur indoors. Of course, indoor coverage is indeed a short board of 5G networks now, and we also believe that the successful commercialization of VoNR can reverse the construction of 5G indoor coverage.
In this regard, Zhejiang Mobile's answer sheet is also good. Zhejiang Mobile's network has been leading the way, with the world's first independent and controllable 5G SA cloud network, the first to launch 5G SA scale applications, becoming the first province with 5G SA commercial capabilities.
From the perspective of the development of the 5G industry, the three major operators have more than 700 million 5G package users and a penetration rate of more than 40%; but another set of data, at the end of 2021, the mainland 5G mobile phone users will only be 355 million. That is to say, nearly half of the 5G package users use 4G mobile phones, which is a serious lack of public 5G application acquisition.
In this regard, the joint efforts of all parties in the industrial chain are required. As suggested by Zhang Yunyong, member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and secretary of the Party Committee and general manager of Yunnan Unicom, accelerate the end-to-end 5G public application service system and promote the support and implementation of 5G functional features and 5G applications on the terminal. Incorporate the use of 5G messages, 5G enhanced calls, and 5G network slicing into the 5G personal application measurement system, and make these functions a mandatory choice for mobile phones to enter the network. (C114 Yue Ming)