Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

In China's science and technology circle in 2018, there are many key words: artificial intelligence, blockchain, Mini Program. Among them, the most basic, core and important one is 5G.

Just as 4G brought the world from the industrial age to the gig economy (Gig Economy), 5G unlocked faster speeds, wider coverage, and lower network latency. Unshackling brings a kind of brand-new network life. The wave of social change and innovation reflected behind it also indicates that the distance between human beings and the science fiction world is no longer far away.

After playing so many high-end "Rainbow Fart", we turn our attention back to 2018, and it is not difficult to find that this epic hit series has already been "booked" for several seasons.

Today, let's review "previously on" and the plot trend together.

At the top of the wave, there are a lot of plans: 5G this year

Regardless of the height of the temple and the distance between rivers and lakes, 2018 seems to have come up with a fierce effort to overtake by changing lanes with the help of 5G.

Not only does the policy support the blowout, but the central economic work conference held a few days ago took 5G as the key task in 2019, making it clear that it is necessary to increase the technological transformation and equipment upgrading of the manufacturing industry, and speed up the pace of 5G commercial use.

The capital market is also booming, and 5G concept stocks, such as Oriental Communications, Supermessaging Communications, Bay Communications, Mingpu Optical magnetism, Fei Rongda, and so on, have soared one after another, and "the scenery is only good" in the gloomy green of the world.

Of course, policy and capital are just "icing on the cake". We still need to sort out what the industrial end did in 2018.

1. The standard game came to an end and officially set sail for commercial use.

In December 2017, the 3GPP 5G independent networking standard was officially completed and released, and in June 2018, the first truly international 5G standard-3GPP 5G independent networking standard was also officially completed and released, which is regarded as the "broken shell" moment of 5G.

At the same time, technology service providers such as Huawei and ZTE have also released a new generation of technology products, such as 3GPP standard 5G commercial chip Barone 5G01 and commercial terminal Huawei 5G CPE.

In terms of policy, in 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also accelerated the planning progress of 5G series of frequencies, issued key points of national radio management work in 2018, and promoted the institutional guarantee of the whole process of radio management.

The anchoring of standard discourse power and the rapid follow-up of basic technology and policy support also indicates that the industrial focus of 5G has shifted from the dispute over standards and patents to the deployment race in the commercial field.

two。 Smart infrastructure strides fast, operators shine their muscles.

On December 10, 2018, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued licenses for the use of sub-6 test frequencies in 5G systems to China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, and relevant departments also approved 5G network pilot projects in some cities.

But long before that, operators had competed with each other in 5G network coverage and commercial experiments.

China Telecom took the lead in completing the 4G and 5G network interoperability verification of the industry's first SA scheme, and also verified the feasibility of the 5G SA scheme; in 2018, China Mobile set up about 20 sites in several cities to conduct scale tests and application demonstrations, and launched 5G tests for commercial use on the world's largest 5G test network.

China Unicom has carried out 5G business demonstration and network trials in 17 pilot cities around Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, municipalities directly under the Central Government and key urban agglomerations in central China. At the same time, 10 billion equity enabling, 10 billion financial enabling and 1 billion platform subsidies are integrated in the terminal to ensure the scale of 5G commercial terminals.

All in all, the substitution effect of Internet services on operators' traditional services will be further revealed in 2018, and whoever will be the first to become a "5G operator" will be the first to convert and reap the first wave of new users (including non-mobile phone users and others transferred from home). Therefore, the mobile deployment race of 5G has become the focus of operators for the whole year of 2018.

The commercial scale and deployment efficiency from the core network to the base station side become the premise of the 5G intelligent ecological network, and will also lay the foundation for the future market share and discourse power of operators.

3. The application side blossoms in an all-round way, combining with the omni-directional and whole industry chain of AI

In 2018, people's imagination about smart hardware is not limited to mobile phones. In addition to the network upgrade for smartphones, cars and a variety of Internet of things devices have also ushered in their own highlights.

Chinese operators actively communicate and cooperate with vertical industry users to promote technical solutions and business models. For example, China Mobile has established a 5G joint innovation center and 12 open laboratories around the world to provide customized 5G end-to-end technical services for various innovative applications. China Unicom has formed a number of industrial alliances, such as China Unicom 5G Industrial Internet Industry Alliance, China Unicom Internet of things Industry Alliance and so on. China Telecom focuses on exploring new business models, combining 5G with cloud computing and the Internet of things, and cross-border integration with vertical industries.

These explorations have also led to the dawn of many ideas that look like science fiction plots in 2018: the so-called "tuyere" in the fields of 3D imaging, autopilot, augmented reality, telemedicine, car networking and so on. are more real than ever under the light of 5G.

All in all, a huge construction project in the name of "wisdom", 2018 is quietly running on the land of China.

The double-edged sword of "tuyere": those hidden 5G crises

5G has changed from a technical standard to a powerful driving force for "changing society", paving the way for many technological and business changes.

But over the past year, too many high-end government reports, as well as the fancy rainbow fart of practitioners, always make us habitually magnify the "magic" of 5G, thinking that it is omnipotent, but ignore the real difficulties and problems.

First of all, there is more and more "wolf coming" propaganda.

In the context of competing for "5G first", operators and mobile phone companies have their own tricks. Although the base station network has not yet been fully built, there are "lucky" consumers who are the first to feel this "earth-shaking" change.

For example, thanks to the "ingenuity" of some mobile phone companies, the "5G" logo is displayed in the 4G phone status bar, so with only 998, you can have a "5G phone" to be the first to achieve a "forced upgrade".

Or change the name of LTE technology, such as "5G E", or set up a 5G standard to preempt the launch of several base stations, and you can claim to be the first operator to launch 5G.

Deliberately confuse the concept of technology, it is likely that by the time the "True 5G" begins to be applied, consumers will already be "tired".

The second is the barrier of opening up wasteland in the industrial chain, and the learning cost of the transformation of traditional service providers is high.

Recently, some friends in the communications industry have complained that the company's business has transformed into NB applications in Smart City, but the application architecture and business model of 5G are almost completely different from the traditional communications business, so there is a lot of pressure to make up lessons collectively.

Indeed, 5G currently has two networking modes, the complexity of terminal research and development is higher, coupled with cloud computing, personalized demand customization, lack of software engineers and other problems. However, if service providers invest more to promote the transformation, it is uncertain whether they will see benefits in a reliable cycle. This uncertainty and engineering problems may directly affect the progress of 5G engineering deployment.

In addition, the data risks and security challenges of 5G are also proportional to the transmission rate, which is getting higher and higher.

On the one hand, 5G business scenarios, such as mobile broadband, high reliability and low latency connections, massive Internet of things, etc., have different requirements for security. For example, 5G end-to-end transmission rate delay is at the ms level, which requires low-latency security algorithms and privacy architecture to protect. Once the security processing performance (such as secondary authentication, vulnerability repair) fails to keep up, the risk factor of the enterprise will suddenly increase. IoT devices need lightweight security that can resist DDos attacks, and vehicle networking needs a highly secure and reliable security mechanism.

All in all, the new architecture of 5G is intertwined with multiple business scenarios and SDN, cloud computing and other technologies, which greatly increases the complexity of security technology and the difficulty of prevention. Obviously, in the face of these new security challenges, operators still need to accumulate some practical experience and mature mechanisms in order to make a wide transition to 5G.

What is there to look forward to in next year's 5G?

It is a bit too idealistic to completely unlock the shackles of 5G applications in the coming year. However, due to the close connection between 5G and industry, it is worth looking forward to the possibility of 5G in commercial application in 2019.

Briefly list a few, such as:

1. Killer apps appear.

In 2019, commercial terminals based on 5G chips will be available, including Intel's fully connected PC, Huawei's 5G mobile phones and so on. This means that the power of 5G can be the first to open the experience imagination space with the help of smartphones.

For example, if you are a mobile game enthusiast, 5G can provide 5 times or even 10 times faster than 4G, what a second-kill advantage it will be in real-time war games! Maybe the next phenomenal game is driven by 5G.

For another example, the "low latency" advantage of 5G makes application scenarios such as remote surgery, vehicle-road collaboration, and smart city possible. With the deep integration of operators and applications, 2019 may produce a benchmarking business application model.

2. Revival of the "sewer" industry (VR/AR).

Many intelligent technologies use 5G to unlock the application, which means that many "sewer" industries can finally see the dawn of business.

For example, virtual reality technology, although the equipment after several iterations, but due to visual effects restrictions and the impact of the network environment, has been hovering in the edge of dismal operation. The new network support brought by 5G can greatly improve the fluency of the VR experience.

Some institutions have predicted that after 5G large-scale commercial use, the shipments of VR and AR equipment will reach the level of 10 million. Until then, these companies can indeed look forward to the favor of capital in 2019.

3. A new round of reshuffle for mobile phone manufacturers.

5G's end products will not be just mobile phones, but for a long time, mobile phones will also be the control center of the Internet of things. As a result, the depth of integration between business and 5G will soon set off a reshuffle in the smartphone industry.

Apple's strained relationship with Qualcomm has raised concerns that adopting Intel's baseband will reduce Apple's support for 5G capabilities. At the same time, Huawei, with its system network + 5G chip + application ecology, may have more support for 5G in its smartphone business. It is estimated that it will be arranged in 2019.

At the same time, Chinese mobile phone brands such as ZTE, Lenovo, OV and Xiaomi also come earlier and faster and have stronger comprehensive capabilities than their counterparts in other countries on the international track. For mobile phone manufacturers with overseas demand, 5G is a historic opportunity for expansion.

4. B-end service has become a new blue ocean.

If we say that the "cement infrastructure" of "if you want to get rich, build roads first" is the strongest voice driving GDP in the era of industrial economy, then the "5G infrastructure", as the basic information superhighway, has greater economic value, higher technological content, and stronger traction capacity to the upstream and downstream industrial chains. Because all the information flow and AI algorithms of the intelligent society have to run in the 5G position, the "5G infrastructure" will change the operation of the whole society.

At present, the Central Economic Conference has taken 5G infrastructure as an important investment point, and the investment scale of 5G in 2019 is likely to exceed expectations. To put it less definitely, the probability is about 99.9%.

It is precisely because 5G brings a lot of gaps and places that need to make up lessons, so it will also bring a new commercial blue ocean for the next stage of "intelligent" infrastructure. In order to help more enterprises dig up the 5G bucket of gold, the demand for B-end services, which plays the role of "water sellers", will also be unimaginable in 2019.

The global speed race of 5G has been extended from the technical standard to the competition of the whole industry chain. The bottom technological breakthroughs of Huawei and ZTE, the accelerated deployment of the three major operators, the industrial linkages of Internet companies such as Baidu, Tencent and Alibaba, and the concerted efforts of these social organizations, is to make 5G truly a revolutionary driving force for changing the way society operates.

And the magnificent story to be told by China in the wise generation, also quietly in the past 2018, has a good beginning.

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