Where are the opportunities for China 5G hidden?

According to Flying Elephant Network News, from the croaking to the completion of the national city coverage, China's 5G has entered its own adolescence at the fastest speed in history. The question that arises for China's hundreds of millions of 5G users is: What's different about 5G? Explicit 5G applications have become the "three thousand troubles" of 5G development in China and the world, and the industry and consumers are eagerly looking forward to 5G applications that can deeply affect people's lives and resonate like mobile Internet access in the 3G era and online car-hailing, video, and food delivery in the 4G era.

But, 5G is different!

5G, 2G, 3G, and 4G are not in the same dimension for the transformation of society and life. 2G, 3G, 4G from scratch, and mobile phones and other mobile terminals together to build a complete set of mobile ecology, if the existing mobile communication era is compared to a building, then 5G may not intend to continue to expand the building endlessly, but is ready to make this mobile ecological building from the inside out, more intelligent, more versatile.

At this year's MWC Shanghai 2021, industry players have calmly put aside the pursuit of "5G killer applications" and have begun to promote 5G to fundamentally promote productivity, although it is not easy.

"4G changes life, 5G changes society", this is the "human design" set by the industry for 5G long ago. After letting go of the fantasy of "eating a fat man in one bite", the whole society has refocused on the fundamental characteristics of 5G, and upgraded the interconnection of thousands of industries and all things in society with the unique connectivity characteristics of 5G.5G is the world's "chosen one"

Mats Granryd, President of the GSMA (Global System for Mobile Communications Systems), borrowed a line from the Chinese poet Li Bai's poem "Difficult to Walk" to describe the current complex situation.

Grad firmly believes that mobile Internet is the most important trend now and in the future, and 5G networks have completed global coverage at an unprecedented speed, and even in the face of the impact of the epidemic, the mobile communication industry still bears a very huge responsibility.

"Where do we go from here?" "We need to adhere to the path of scientific development, embrace innovation, and all those innovations, technologies, and cutting-edge technologies that can make human beings communicate and communicate more freely and unfettered."

"Our infrastructure and infrastructure need to be smarter connected." "Edge computing and deep computing need the support of 5G infrastructure, and 5G networks change the way people do business and social behavior," said Grad.

The GSMA believes that 5G will generate $700 billion in annual revenue growth for industry sectors by 2030, and that 5G will create greater opportunities in industries such as aviation, manufacturing, and AR/VR (virtual reality, augmented reality).

According to the 5G Economy report, commissioned by Qualcomm Technologies and independently studied by IHS Markit, despite the impact of the global economy, the number of jobs created in the global 5G value chain will increase to 22.8 million by 2035, up from 22.3 million projected in 2019.

The report predicts that by 2035, the 5G value chain alone will generate $3.8 trillion in economic output and drive $13.1 trillion in global economic output.In China, the China Mobile Economic Development Report 2021 released by GSMA Intelligence pointed out that China continues to maintain its position as one of the world's leading markets for 5G technology. One of the main themes of the report is the scale of 5G in China: more than 200 million new 5G connections were added in 2020; It is expected that by 2025, China will have more than 800 million 5G connections, providing a range of products and services to individual consumers and the wider economy.

Si Han, President of GSMA Greater China, said that China's 5G connections have accounted for 87% of the world's 5G connections, and in the future, Chinese operators will continue to increase the deployment of 5G base stations. Mobile operators in China and around the world play a very important role in this regard. ”

Therefore, for both countries in the world and China, 5G is an epoch-making technological innovation that is expected to promote economic transformation and upgrading.

Trillion-dollar investment by China and the US continues to lead the way in 5G. 

Data shows that China has built over 718,000 5G base stations cumulatively, and the cumulative investment in 5G network construction has exceeded 260 billion yuan. Industry insiders predict that the total investment in 5G base station construction in China will reach a trillion yuan in the next five years, and the related layout of the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain will also accelerate further. 

At present, 144 5G networks have been launched globally, and another 90 are expected to be rolled out. There are already over 200 types of 5G devices on the market. That is to say, one out of every five people in the world will be covered by 5G. According to Gartner, by 2025, operators will spend 80% of their investment on 5G, reaching a staggering 1.1 trillion US dollars. "In China, South Korea and Japan, consumers have a very high willingness to upgrade to 5G networks. This is very exciting." 

The "5G Economy" report indicates that the total annual R&D investment and capital expenditure of 5G value chain enterprises in the world's leading 5G countries will exceed 260 billion US dollars on average. China and the United States are expected to remain at the forefront in 5G capital expenditure and R&D investment. The two countries will respectively invest 1.7 trillion US dollars and 1.3 trillion US dollars over a period of 15 years. 

IHS Markit believes that during the global pandemic, enterprises, governments and all sectors of society have deeply realized the importance of connectivity technology, further accelerating this trend. The digital transformation of industries that usually takes several years is now accelerating sharply. 

GSMA believes that 5G-related investment will help the global economy overcome the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and kick-start economic recovery in the post-pandemic era. 

For whom is 5G built? 

Tian Suning, CEO of CBC Broadband Capital, raised a very interesting question at MWC Shanghai 2021 - "For whom is 5G built?" 

As is known to all, 5G has "three highs": high investment, high operation and maintenance costs, and high expectations. However, the upgrade in the experience of personal 5G mobile phones is far less significant than imagined. 

Tian Suning boldly put forward his own viewpoint - "5G is not a network for connecting people", "5G is created for the Internet of Everything. 5G is a network for device perception. 5G can endow all kinds of devices, even trees, with perception capabilities, enabling them to hear, see and even smell." 

From thousands of years ago to today, people's approach to the world has evolved from perception to cognition and then to prediction. Based on the 5G-enabled perception connection network, the progress of humanity from civilization to industry will experience a leapfrog improvement. Tian Suning said that the world needs to be recorded and an environmental perception network needs to be established to record the real-time changes of the objective world. The significance of this intelligent connection is stronger than all previous connections. 

At present, data has become one of the most important production factors. Fields such as real-time data observation, objective data recording, and non-contact transaction data are all on the rise. Currently, the industry's ability to record data in these areas is still lacking. Tian Suning believes that these are all potential opportunities. 

"5G is born for devices and built for perception," said Tian Suning. 

Industry users will be the key service targets of 5G. 

From a technical perspective, compared with 4G networks, 5G has undergone significant changes in network architecture, implementation methods, operation and maintenance energy conservation, and service targets, and this is precisely what makes 5G "distinctive". 

In terms of network architecture, 5G radio frequency and antennas are tightly coupled, and the core network is moved closer to the user side, forming an "application kaleidoscope" of application and network customization. In terms of implementation methods, the 5G core network has been IT-ized, and the trend of cloud-network integration is unstoppable. More participants and players will enter the 5G market through this channel. In terms of operation and maintenance, intelligent operation and maintenance will replace manual operation and maintenance and become the mainstream, while energy conservation will also remain a continuous important topic in operation and maintenance. In terms of service targets, industry customers have become the key service targets of 5G networks and a new driving force for revenue growth, which has become a consensus across the entire communication industry. 

For the first time, 5G will expand the human-centered communication ecosystem to one centered on both humans and objects. More importantly, in the 5G era, intelligent connections centered on objects will become the main blue ocean market space. 

The large bandwidth, high reliability, low latency and wide connection features of 5G networks can support the development of application scenarios such as smart education, healthcare, energy, transportation and industrial internet. The service targets of 5G networks will also quietly expand from C-end users to industry users. From an objective data perspective, the penetration rate of mobile phones in China has reached 114%, and existing users will gradually upgrade to 5G packages as the network maturity improves. However, the growth of new users is weak, and the ARPU and revenue increment obtained by telecom operators are insufficient. The scissors gap between the rapid increase in mobile data traffic and the continuous decline in the growth rate of mobile data and internet business revenue has become an inescapable "curse" for telecom operators in the past 10 years. 

Therefore, industry users will become the key service targets of 5G networks and a new driving force for revenue growth. 

Operator: 5G is bound to be an "integrated ecosystem" 

In China, telecommunications operators have always been one of the most important players in the large communication ecosystem. During the 3G and 4G eras, operators failed to fully seize the best window of the Internet's explosive growth, and the "pipe" curse has never been relaxed. The three major operators in China are very much looking forward to leveraging the changes in the 5G network architecture and service targets to bring new development opportunities for themselves. 

At the opening keynote forum of MWC Shanghai 2021, Yang Jie, Chairman of China Mobile, expounded his observations on the current situation: "The accelerated digital and intelligent transformation of the entire society has promoted the vigorous development of new economic forms. Essentially, new economic forms are the chemical reaction of the three words 'real', 'virtual' and 'soft'. 'Real' refers to the real economy, 'virtual' to the virtual economy, and 'soft' to information technology and services." 

Yang Jie further explained, "The integration of 'real' and 'soft' has given rise to the digital intelligence economy. The in-depth integration of new-generation information technologies into various industries has triggered profound changes in production methods and business models, accelerating the development of digital intelligence industrialization and industrial digital intelligence. The fusion of 'virtual' and 'soft' has driven financial innovation. The extensive application of big data, artificial intelligence, blockchain and other technologies in the financial sector has facilitated the rapid development of digital finance and inclusive finance. 'Soft' also serves as a 'catalyst' for the integration of the virtual and the real, promoting the precise matching of financial capital with the actual needs of production, and accelerating the high-end development of industrial foundations and the modernization of industrial chains. In the process of endowing the real and the virtual with intelligence, 'soft' has also ushered in broad development space for itself." 

Yang Jie introduced that China Mobile will build basic services such as 5G messaging, broadband TV, and 5G private networks, as well as key platforms like the digital life all-domain supermarket, to significantly increase the proportion of information services. At the same time, it will lead the development of new-generation network information technologies such as 5G and 6G, and strengthen the forging of key capabilities in digital and intelligent fields like AR, CDE, and blockchain. 

In the process of promoting the development of 5G, Ke Ruiwen, the chairman of China Telecom, stated that based on its insight into the essence and nature of 5G, China Telecom is more determined to develop 5G SA, and the future path ahead is clearer. 

Ke Ruiwen stated that China Telecom's commitment to the 5G SA development direction can be broken down into three aspects. First, it adheres to cloud-network integration. The 5G era is the era of cloud, and also the era of mutual integration between cloud and network. 5G SA provides an important opportunity and technical means for cloud-network integration and will become the best practice of cloud-network integration. Second, it adheres to co-construction and sharing. Together with China Unicom, it has creatively achieved "one physical network, two logical networks, efficient 4/5G coordination, and independent operation", building the world's largest co-construction and sharing network, saving a large amount of investment and operation costs. Third, it prioritizes user usage security. Based on its own resource advantages, it is committed to building an end-network-cloud integrated security capability and providing users with scenario-based security solutions. 

What is the essence of 5G? According to Ke Ruiwen, it should be innovative, open and secure. What is 5G? "The customers have the final say." Ke Ruiwen stated that China Telecom is implementing the "cloud transformation and digitalization" strategy, whose essence is to be customer-centered, taking meeting the customers' growing information demands, enhancing their service experience, and increasing their sense of gain, happiness and security as the starting point and ultimate goal of all work. "China Telecom will closely follow the customers' demands and, with the support and assistance of all partners, continuously improve its digital supply capacity to create a 5G service that is innovation-driven, cloud-network integrated, secure and trustworthy, and harmonious and symbiotic for users." 

From the latest strategies and top-level designs mentioned above, China's telecom operators have deeply and firmly recognized that 5G is an industry of integrated development. Only by maintaining an open and integrated attitude towards technology, ecology and networks can they achieve their own significant growth. Meanwhile, in the entire ecosystem and all industries, from top to bottom, from finance and energy to C-end users, 5G will play a huge role in reshaping. 

Isolated 5G cannot unleash much energy, but "5G + X" has unlimited possibilities. 

Thousands of 5G industry applications were showcased at MWC. 

At this year's MWC Shanghai 2021, 5G industry applications are the absolute stars. Industry players represented by Huawei, ZTE, Nokia Bell, AsiaInfo and Inspur have launched thousands of 5G industry applications. The explosion of 5G industry applications is clearly on the verge of happening. 

In 2020, while China's 5G was leading the world, a large number of commercial practices in industry applications had already been formed. In China, driven by 5G, over 5,000 commercial innovation projects are being implemented and put into practice in multiple industries. Globally, more than 20 industries have deployed 5G demonstration applications, such as coal mines, steel, ports, manufacturing, etc. Global operators have signed over 1,000 5G industry application contracts. 

Almost simultaneously with the opening of the conference, GSMA and Huawei, representing industry organizations and enterprises respectively, released two 5G industry application reports - "China 5G Vertical Industry Application Cases 2021" and "How 5GtoB Empowers Thousands of Industries". The two reports collected dozens of cases from various industries such as ports and mines, transportation, power, and healthcare, spanning different industrial fields, focusing on how new-generation information technology integrates into industry markets, application scenarios, and future development opportunities. 

Sun Pengfei, the main author of "How 5GtoB Empowers Thousands of Industries" and the director of the 5GtoB Solution Department of Huawei's ICT Strategy and Marketing, personally investigated the on-site 5G application scenarios in industrial and mining enterprises. Sun Pengfei introduced that in mining areas, 5G drones have increased the efficiency of safety inspections and 3D data collection of the surface by tens of times, and the super uplink feature of 5G has greatly extended the effective distance of AI recognition. In ports, the 5G equipment monitoring system enables workers to operate equipment more safely and efficiently, and a comprehensive equipment data detection can be completed in just a few seconds. In ports, after the operation of one ship loader by four workers in three shifts was automated, only three people can operate three "automatic ship loaders". 

Yü Weigang, the executive vice president of Hunan Valin Xiangtan Iron & Steel Co., Ltd., said that in the past, workshop inspectors relied on touching, listening and observing to check equipment. After the 5G monitoring system was installed on the equipment, the equipment utilization rate rose to 96%, and the daily iron output increased by more than 30%. 

Chang Jie, General Manager of Innovation and Ecosystem Cooperation of GSMA Greater China, said that the value of 5G in transforming and upgrading industries lies in "turning black faces into white ones, black clothes into white ones, and sauna workshops into air-conditioned ones", bringing positive impacts to both industrial development and workers. 

At the 2021 MWC Shanghai, 5G has demonstrated highly valuable application scenarios in industries such as steel, mining, ports, and energy, thanks to its high bandwidth, low latency, and strong controllability. Meanwhile, it has also made significant achievements in industrial internet areas like flexible production and precision manufacturing. Companies like Huawei and ZTE have implemented 5G smart manufacturing on their own production lines, such as ZTE's Binjiang Factory and Huawei's Songshan Lake Production Base. 

A 2021 MWC Shanghai exhibitor said, "Many companies are now studying how 5G can be implemented, but 80% of people believe it will be applied in vertical industries, especially in enterprise-level and government-level applications, which both have great prospects." 

In terms of the expansion of 5G industry applications, another encouraging feature is that enterprises across the entire 5G industry chain are leveraging their core business advantages to enter the 5G industry application solutions market. Telecom operators, equipment manufacturers, integrators and private network vendors mainly leverage their advantages in the communication field to enter from CT solutions; IT equipment manufacturers and cloud service providers mainly enter from IT solutions, and small base station business is emerging. 

It is worth noting that as China has not yet released the frequency bands for 5G industry private networks, 5G industry solution service providers must cooperate with telecom operators and use their networks. Both telecom operators and communication equipment manufacturers have recognized the importance of win-win cooperation and demonstrated an open and cooperative attitude in the implementation of 5G industry applications. 

5G investment is "ubiquitous" 

When the entire ecosystem of the mobile communication and IT industries are actively engaged in the 5G wave, investment opportunities in 5G emerge. However, in the face of an investment environment that is completely different from that of the 3G and 4G eras but still has some patterns to follow, how should the opportunities in 5G investment be seized? 

Shayue Jia, an innovation advisor at GSMA, believes that based on historical experience, predictions about future applications may be wrong, but the general trend will not be. Investment in 5G should not be focused on a specific field or application, but rather on the overall trend. One should firmly position oneself in the wave of 5G development to gain benefits. 

The replacement of each generation of communication technology undoubtedly brings opportunities to investors. 4G has brought extremely rich applications and huge economic contributions to the whole society. Sha Yuejia said that in the process of investing in 5G, one can aim at large projects or small and beautiful ones. Everyone can enter and invest in 5G based on their own pain points, observations and cognition, and create value through innovation. "For example, industries such as tourism and automobiles all have opportunities. From a technical perspective, it is very easy to achieve real-time translation by taking advantage of the low latency feature of 5G. 5G investors should start from the fields they are familiar with to find breakthrough points." 

Investment opportunities in 5G can be found everywhere. Sha Yuejia reminds us that for Chinese 5G investors, the foundational support role of Chinese telecom operators is more prominent. The high-quality 5G network coverage provided by Chinese operators is a unique advantage for Chinese 5G investors. 

Tian Suning cautioned that 5G represents a major industrial transformation. Investment in 5G requires long-term patience and unwavering determination. The changes brought about by 5G are even more profound than those of the early information and communication revolution. Moreover, 5G innovation must be global. "Over the past 30 years, China has been a beneficiary of globalization. 5G investors should seize the opportunity, shoulder their responsibilities, and build a global platform for the interconnection of all things." 

Tian Suning added that 5G security is an investment area he is optimistic about. The data security, connection security and authentication security of 5G all hold very important ecological opportunities.