On-demand deployment to unleash the full value of 5G
Author/ IT Times reporter Qian Lifu
Editor/ Hao Junhui Sun Yan
Editor's note
In 2024, when the wave of digitalization is surging, Shanghai will once again become the focus of the global communications community.
The 2024 Mobile World Congress Shanghai (MWC24 Shanghai) with the theme of "Future First" kicked off on June 26.
The rise of the AI economy is reshaping the global economic landscape. In this feast of technology and wisdom, telecom operators will focus on the exploration of the next generation of communication technologies 6G and ultra-high-speed broadband, and how to push the potential of 5G to the extreme, laying the cornerstone for the future of the Internet of Everything.
IT Times reporters visited the booths of major telecom operators and manufacturers to capture every subtle clue and innovation spark that may lead the future technology trend.
At the Mobile World Congress held in Shanghai in June last year, 5G-A has become a little popular, and many manufacturers have demonstrated their innovations about 5G-A.
In the year that followed, 5G-A developed rapidly, making remarkable progress at multiple levels and dimensions. At the standard level, just a few days ago, 3GPP officially announced the freezing of the R18 standard, which is the first version for 5G-A, paving the way for large-scale commercial use of 5G-A. In terms of application expansion, especially in China, whether it is 3CC (three-carrier aggregation), synaesthesia, passive IoT, RedCap, these technical features are being widely used in reality to better meet the needs of individuals and industries for greater bandwidth, higher reliability, and more connections.
With this year's accumulation, at the 2024 Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, 5G-A will become a "popular fried chicken" and a "star" at the booths of operators and equipment manufacturers.
The signs are already very obvious, and the curtain of 5G-A commercial use is opening in 2024, which is becoming a key move to play the "second half" of 5G and promote the full release of 5G value.
5G "is not enough"
5G-A is accelerating
"As of the end of May this year, the mainland has built a total of 3.837 million 5G base stations, accounting for 60% of the total number of 5G base stations in the world, realizing gigabit access to cities, 5G to counties and 5G, and broadband to villages. China continues to promote the large-scale application of 5G, achieving a total of more than 94,000 5G application cases, and has achieved large-scale application in industry, mining, power and other industries," said Zhao Zhiguo, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Mobile World Congress Shanghai.
There is no doubt that in the past five years of commercial use, the mainland has made great achievements in 5G, whether it is network construction, application expansion or user growth.
If 5G is developing rapidly, why should we develop 5G-A? The reason for this is that in many cases, 5G is not enough, and 5G-A with stronger capabilities is needed to break the game.
For example, in the consumer field, although 5G brings Internet access speed several times faster than 4G, downloading a large file in one second or ten seconds will not bring obvious perceptual differences to users, but makes many people think that "5G is useless, 4G can meet the demand".
This also leads to the fact that five years after the license, the scale and proportion of 5G users in the mainland are not as good as 4G performance, and the "dominance" of 5G mobile phones is not as good as the performance of 4G in the same period.
For example, VR/AR is generally regarded as the "trump card" of 5G applications, but in fact, it has not achieved the desired goal, and the existing 5G cannot truly meet the service requirements of VR/AR for low latency and high bandwidth.
In the field of industrial production, 5G is facing greater challenges and pressures. Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, previously said that 5G cannot fully meet the requirements of industrial applications for large uplink bandwidth, deterministic latency, high reliability and precise positioning. Moreover, from the perspective of accelerating the development of the Internet of Things, it needs to be supported by lightweight, high-density, wide coverage, low-cost, and long-life networks. In other words, 5G requires more bandwidth, higher speeds, more reliability, more certainty, higher density, lower costs, and so on.
As a result, 5G-A came into being, which greatly improves the capability boundaries of existing 5G. In short, there are four "ten-fold" improvements, namely "ten-fold bandwidth, tenfold number of connections, tenfold positioning accuracy, and tenfold energy efficiency improvements". At the same time, 5G-A also has many innovative capabilities, such as synaesthesia integration and so on.
From "cold" to "hot"
Operators move faster
Last year, although 5G-A has been hot, equipment manufacturers and other industrial chain links to show 5G-A innovative applications and products at the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, but the attitude of telecom operators is more cautious, in the speeches of the chairmen of the three telecom operators, there is no mention of 5G-A. This year, 5G-A has become a high-frequency word in the speeches of the chairmen of the three operators.
Ke Ruiwen, Chairman of China Telecom, said in his keynote speech, "China Telecom will steadily promote the upgrade of 5G networks, strengthen the strategic layout of 5G-A and 6G research and development, and adhere to the integration of 5G-A and 6G. Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, said that it is necessary to "promote the evolution of 5G and 6G in an integrated manner, accelerate technological breakthroughs such as new network architecture and integrated synaesthesia computing", and said that "promote the application of 5G-A, three-dimensional space navigation and other technologies in low-altitude economic fields such as cultural tourism, logistics, and emergency response." Chen Zhongyue, chairman of China Unicom, said, "Carry out 5G-A and space-ground integration technology innovation, promote the intelligent upgrade of network elements, components, topologies and systems, and build a more agile, efficient and intelligent ubiquitous intelligent network." ”
In the exhibition area and related activities, 5G-A is also the focus of telecom operators' participation in the Mobile World Congress in Shanghai this year.
In the China Telecom exhibition area, a variety of applications that reflect the characteristics and advantages of 5G-A, such as 3CC, synaesthesia, and RedCap, have become the highlights. For example, China Telecom Shanghai Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as Shanghai Telecom) took the lead in completing the 5G-A water synaesthesia field test in the Huangpu River waterway, using the perception capability of the new higher-frequency 5G-A base station to realize the perception of ships and other objects, so as to obtain the data of ships passing through the waterway, and provide more advanced and accurate support means for waterway management and ship operation, such as intelligent navigation assistance in severe weather such as heavy rain and fog, and prevent collisions between ships and bridges. "In the river area, the 5G-A synaesthesia integration can achieve a maximum sensing distance of more than 1,000 meters, a perception accuracy of sub-meters, and a perception rate accuracy of 0.1km/h." China Telecom exhibition staff introduced.
China Unicom focuses on the six application scenarios of 5G-A, adopts the "six-in-one" promotion idea, actively carries out technical research and industrial promotion, and promotes 5G-A technology from standard to commercial.
China Mobile not only showcased 5G-A related applications, but also elaborated on its own 5G-A deployment plan in recent years: it will take the lead in launching 5G-A construction in 2024 and will achieve 5G-A commercial deployment in 300 cities by the end of the year; In 2025, we will strive to "connect the dots into a chain" and achieve large-scale development of 5G-A. In 2026, 5G-A will be fully commercialized.
At the conference, Huawei and a number of domestic and foreign telecom operators released the Global 5G-A Commercial Pilot Plan, jointly promoting the development of 5G-A from various aspects, such as "upgrading the business model", "driving service innovation", and "high-quality network construction".
Go both ways with the city
Shanghai is at the forefront
If 5G-A wants to take fruition, it needs to have "fertile soil", and cities with dense traffic and enterprises are undoubtedly ideal. At the same time, cities are also accelerating the improvement of urban energy levels by building new infrastructure, and 5G-A is also needed as a powerful partner. As a result, 5G-A and cities are moving forward in both directions. In particular, first-tier megacities have a more positive attitude towards promoting the development of 5G-A.
At the beginning of this year, Beijing released the Action Plan for Promoting 5G-A Technology Evolution and Application Innovation (2024-2026), proposing to build or renovate more than 4,000 5G-A base stations in 2024 and more than 20,000 5G-A base stations by 2026 to create a "double 10 gigabit" benchmark city.
In March this year, the "Shenzhen 2024 Action Plan for Extreme Fast Broadband Pioneer City" was released, emphasizing the promotion of large-scale deployment of 5G-A and deepening 5G-A application innovation. In terms of large-scale deployment, Shenzhen proposes to build 5G-A network scale contiguous demonstration areas in Futian Central District, Shenzhen Bay Super Headquarters Base and other areas, and upgrade to support more than 5,000 5G-A base stations. In terms of application innovation, Shenzhen emphasizes that it will pilot more than 10 5G-A integrated applications in the fields of low-altitude economy and smart transportation, and form a number of 5G-A pioneer application cases.
Shanghai is also fast. The "Action Plan for Further Promoting the Construction of New Infrastructure in Shanghai (2023~2026)" issued in the second half of last year clearly states that by the end of 2026, Shanghai plans to initially build a global double 10 Gigabit city marked by 5G-A and 10 Gigabit optical networks, and achieve a global leader in the coverage breadth and application depth of 5G-A networks and 10 Gigabit optical networks. The plan also clearly proposes to "accelerate the pilot deployment of 5G-A networks to support the first commercial implementation of applications such as the Internet of Vehicles, virtual reality, and 8K ultra-high definition." ”
Now, Shanghai has achieved remarkable results in the development of 5G-A. According to a relevant person from the Shanghai Municipal Communications Administration, in terms of network construction, Shanghai has deployed more than 18,000 5G-A base stations. In terms of application expansion, it is a multi-point flowering, whether it is synaesthesia, 3CC or passive IoT, there are rich scenarios landing.
In densely populated areas such as Shanghai Metro Line 18, Hongqiao Vanke, and Century Avenue, Shanghai Telecom has deployed a continuous 3CC network to bring citizens a high-speed Internet experience. On Metro Line 18, the test results of technicians show that the peak download rate exceeds 3.1 Gbps, and the average rate is nearly 1.7 Gbps, which is nearly 30% higher than the original two-carrier aggregation.
In Shanghai Zijiang New Materials Co., Ltd., Shanghai Telecom has completed the first 800M low-frequency-based passive IoT pilot verification, providing a new operation mode and means for the warehousing industry.
On buses, China Telecom Shanghai is actively deploying 5G RedCap modules, which can send back high-definition video streams captured by cameras, provide real-time feedback on roads, vehicles, and passengers, analyze passengers' riding comfort, and detect drivers' driving concentration to ensure safe driving.
More and more cities are embracing 5G-A, and more and more scenarios are being implemented, which will strongly lead the development of 5G-A.
Deploy on demand
It will not replace 5G
In the second half of last year, a number of 5G-A pilots and commercial deployments were launched around the world. With the recent freezing of the R18 standard, 5G-A has the most basic available standard, and more operators will start large-scale commercial use. GSMA research shows that more than 50% of operators plan to deploy 5G-A within a year of the standard's release.
More and more operators are investing in it, and at the same time, the 5G-A industry chain is also maturing. For example, on the terminal side, at this year's Mobile World Congress in Shanghai, Huawei said that more than 30 mobile phones and CPEs will fully support 5G-A this year.
As the conditions for the full deployment of 5G-A mature, does it mean that 5G will be replaced and the "front wave" will be slapped on the "beach"?
The answer is no.
"5G-A adopts the basic principles of close to the application, on-demand deployment, and moderate advancement, with strong construction flexibility and moderate investment", at a recent meeting, the relevant person in charge of the Shanghai Municipal Communications Administration said, "5G-A is not a replacement for 5G, but according to specific needs, in the key scenario requirements of higher speed, larger bandwidth, and lower latency, the 5G network is evolved and upgraded." ”
In other words, on the basis of the 5G base network, 5G-A will be deployed according to the requirements and deployed in scenarios with high requirements. For example, 3CC is generally only deployed in densely populated areas, and RedCap is generally only deployed in key cities.
5G-A will not replace 5G, but build a "bridge" between 5G and 6G, laying a good foundation for the arrival of 6G. The industry expects the first version of 6G to appear around 2030, but some features of 6G, such as synaesthesia and passive IoT, have been reflected in 5G-A. It can be seen that 5G to 6G is not a leapfrog development, and 5G-A plays a role in connecting the upper and lower levels, preparing for the maturity of 6G technology and industrial expansion.
Typesetting / Ji Jiaying
Photo/ Shanghai Telecom IT Times Oriental IC
Source/"IT Times" official account vittimes
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