In June 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Radio and Television, officially kicking off the 5G commercial use in mainland China.
Part.01
After 4 years of licensing, 5G development has yielded fruitful results
Four years later, as a major 5G construction country, China has built the world's largest 5G network, serving the world's largest 5G user market and carrying out the world's richest 5G social applications.
Communication infrastructure is the foundation of the development of the 5G industry, the foundation and cornerstone, and an important part of the 5G ecosystem. The mainland is far ahead in the number of 5G base stations and individual users, and has built the world's largest 5G SA network. By the end of April 2023, the total number of 5G base stations in mainland China reached 2.733 million, accounting for more than 60% of the world's total. The 5G network coverage of administrative districts above the county seat has reached 100%, realizing "gigabit communication between cities and cities" and "5G communication between counties and counties".
5G mobile phone subscribers have maintained rapid growth, with 634 million subscribers currently available. At the same time, Mainland China has also built a 5G "one network" for the service industry. By the end of 2022, the total number of virtual private network construction in the 5G industry exceeded 14,000, covering industry, ports, energy, medical and other fields.
In terms of converged applications, there have been more than 50,000 5G application innovation cases, 5G has been integrated into 52 of 97 national economic categories, and 5G application projects have been implemented in 31 provinces (autonomous regions and municipalities) in China, and continue to expand and deepen. The development of personal applications has accelerated, and the three major operators are actively developing 5G personal applications around 5G VoNR, XR, AI and other fields. China Mobile took the lead in 5G VoNR trial commercialization, and Migu released "fast game" products such as 5G cloud VR and 5G cloud gaming. China Telecom has included Tianyi Cloud Games and Tianyi Cloud VR into its 5G membership rights and benefits, which can be experienced for free; In May 2022, China Unicom launched 5G VoNR services in 125 cities in China.
According to the calculation of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, in 2022, the mainland's 5G will directly drive the total economic output of 1.45 trillion yuan, indirectly drive the total output of about 3.49 trillion yuan, and indirectly drive the economic added value of about 1.27 trillion yuan.
Part.02
In the second half of 5G, the application scale has a long way to go
The large-scale promotion of the 5G industry is the key to the commercial success of 5G. At present, 5G development has entered the second half, and how to achieve the scale replication of 5G industry applications from 1 to N has become the focus of attention.
In general, the harvest of the first half of 5G is that through active exploration, the industry has a deep understanding and understanding of the ability of 5G to empower thousands of industries; Second, a number of high-quality 5G application cases have emerged in the fields of ports, electric power, steel, mining, advanced manufacturing, and electronic manufacturing.
However, these cases are only point-like cases and do not have an overall effect. In order to solve this problem, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is implementing 5G large-scale application projects this year to accelerate the large-scale development of 5G applications.
The industrial Internet is considered to be the main battlefield for 5G applications. Since the commercial use of 5G, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has been promoting the development of "5G + industrial Internet" from point to point.
From the release of 20 typical application scenarios and 10 key industry practices of "5G + Industrial Internet" to the issuance of the "5G Fully Connected Factory Construction Guide", our work on the "5G + Industrial Internet" point and online has been quite successful. At present, the industry is actively promoting 5G fully connected factories, and many companies have played a leading role in demonstration.
However, in the "face" stage, the current "5G + industrial Internet" has encountered deep-seated problems such as high network construction costs, single applications, and unclear business models.
The solution proposed by the industry department is to focus on the scale application of the regional scope first: the "5G + Industrial Internet" integrated application pilot area can solve the practical problems in technology, application, industry and ecology faced by the scale application of "5G + Industrial Internet".
At this stage, many provinces and cities across the country have responded positively, and have intensively carried out the preliminary preparations for the construction of the "5G + Industrial Internet" pilot zone to promote the "5G + Industrial Internet" from pilot demonstration to large-scale application.
The commercial deployment and large-scale application of 5G is itself a gradual process. It is believed that with the cooperation of the industry chain, the scale of 5G industry applications will achieve a leap from 1 to N in the future.