Behind 5G heat: How to earn money?

This year, the 5G scale test will be conducted.

Pre-commercial next year, officially commercialized in 2020.

Behind 5G heat: How to earn money?

On December 3, 2017, the 4th World Internet Conference World Internet Leading Scientific and Technological Achievements Launching Event was held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang. Xu Zhijun, the rotating CEO of Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., introduced Huawei's 3GPP 5G technology achievements. Figure / Xinhua

2018, open 5G first year

Today, we enjoy the huge dividends brought by 4G every day - live broadcast, video calls, mobile payments, Internet taxis, mobile games, etc., all thanks to the speed of wireless communication networks. Liu Guangyi, chief engineer of the Institute of Wireless and Terminal Technology of China Mobile Research Institute, participated in the research and development of 4G. At that time, the mobile phone was only used for talking, texting, and browsing the web. He did not expect that with the development of intelligent terminals, 4G quickly became popular. The behavior of people using mobile phones has completely changed.

With the happy life brought by 4G, people are looking forward to 5G (the 5th generation mobile communication system). In 2018, all the topics related to 5G are hot, and people seem to hear the footsteps of 5G. According to the plan, the final formulation of the 5G standard will be completed in 2020.

Recently, Liu Guangyi is most concerned about whether the first version of the complete standard version of Release 15 (referred to as R15) for 5G can be frozen on time. His team is involved in China Mobile's 5G R&D.

Standard setting: competition and cooperation

In accordance with the most important 5G international standards, the organization's 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project) work schedule was established. In June this year, the R15 technical specification standard was frozen, which means that next step, Huawei, Nokia and other equipment manufacturers can follow the standards. Product development, telecom operators began to deploy. 5G has already passed the stage of the industry's “painting of cakes” in the past few years, and it is a step closer to commercial use.

There is a jargon in the communications industry: first-class companies sell standards, second-rate companies sell patents, and third-rate companies sell products. If your own solution is finally incorporated into the 3GPP standards, there will be more voice in the future 5G development. The process of submitting proposals by members naturally becomes a game.

"The 5G competition first reflects the participation of everyone in the process of setting standards. This competition is sometimes very intense, and may even be your life." Liu Guangyi once participated in the 3GPP conference on behalf of China Mobile. Members of the organization include network operators, terminal manufacturers, chip manufacturers, basic manufacturers, academia, research institutions, and government agencies. Members propose different solutions at the 3GPP conference based on their market needs and technological developments. Technology, followed by on-site discussions.

Liu Guangyi was impressed by the fact that China Mobile’s team presented its proposal on the wireless signal transmission format on the big screen at the scene, and the chairman sat on the stage to host. As soon as they finished the proposal, a representative of the equipment manufacturer rose up and raised objections and asked questions. "This equipment manufacturer has already patented this technology. They think that if you set a new format, I will develop one more in the future. From the perspective of terminal base station construction, the resources and inputs for development will increase. The complexity will also increase. At the same time, for a patented company, a new format appears, and their original intellectual property rights are not mandatory and will affect the value of the company. At this time, others will try to stop You, don't let you write in." Liu Guangyi said.

Zhang Ping, director of the State Key Laboratory of Network and Switching Technology at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, and member of the expert group of the IMT-2020 (5G) promotion group, said that fierce competition in standard setting is the norm. Each proposal represents benefits, and most proposals are not It is irreplaceable. Everyone has a lot of choices. It depends on whether your standards are perfect and systematic in the entire standard system. Of course, there are also some human factors.

What often happens in standard setting is that few proposals are irreplaceable, so a technology is subject to competition when it is included in 3GPP, so each member will repeatedly debate the specific details and play in the foreground and background. If the opinions of the people on the site are agreed, the chairman will write the contents of the proposal in the minutes of the meeting. If there is a big controversy, the chairman will advise you to continue the discussion after the meeting and continue to show it at the meeting after forming a consensus. "But the final decision is still driven by technology. There will be games between the parties, and there will be a process of compromise." Liu Guangyi said.

According to Patrick Moorhead, founder and principal analyst of market research firm Moor Insights & Strategy, quality proposals are more important than those that are proud of the number of proposals. The importance of the proposal lies in the extent to which the mobile ecosystem can be promoted by expanding the new features and areas of the ecosystem.

Domestic companies such as Huawei and ZTE are also involved in the formulation of 5G related technical standards. At the 3GPP RAN1 #87 meeting, the voting for the 5G short code program was called "the war without smoke." On November 16, 2016, the discussion at the meeting was extremely intense. Almost all companies were involved in the discussion of the program, and the parties did not give each other. In the early morning of the next day, China's Polar Code (Polarization Code) scheme won more votes, and was confirmed by 3GPP as the 5G control channel eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband) scene coding scheme. The competition is dominated by the US LDPC and France. Turbo2.0. Previously, LDPC has been confirmed to be the coding scheme for data channels.

The recent controversy over Lenovo on the social network is precisely the vote of Huawei's polarized code scheme two years ago.

The global securities and investment banking group Jefferies released the report "Telecom Services - Geopolitics of 5G and IoT (Internet of Things)" in September last year, which focused on the changes in China's position in 5G R&D. According to the report, as of the beginning of 2017, 10% of the 1,450 5G network important patents are owned by the Chinese, and they expect this number to rise. This includes intellectual property rights owned by Huawei and ZTE and other companies. The report also pointed out that only Qualcomm in the United States has 15% of 5G patents, Nokia accounts for 11%, and Ericsson accounts for 8%.

From the history of mobile communication development, although China is the world's largest mobile market for users and networks, Qualcomm, Nokia, Ericsson, Samsung and LG have dominated mobile communication technologies in the past. China has no right to speak in the 2G and 3G eras. At present, there is such a growth rate in the 5G era, so that foreign countries must pay special attention to China's competitors.

In mid-April, the United States Wireless Communications and Internet Association (CTIA) released the "5G Global Competition" report mentioned that China, South Korea, the United States and Japan and other countries in the 5G preparations outstanding performance, China is in a leading position. These countries understand that leadership in the wireless arena means billions of dollars in economic growth and jobs in millions of future industries.

The experience of Zhang Ping in these years reflects the changes in the right to speak in China. When he first represented the country in the 3G International Standardization Technology Conference, except for the Chinese government, the only technical representative was him. He used three "S"s to describe the situation of the Chinese team meeting abroad at the time. "Smiling - everyone with a smile, Silence - keep silent, Sleeping - talking and falling asleep, because with the Chinese It doesn't matter." But he found that there are many Chinese companies and organizations participating in the 3GPP conference, and many people even hold the chairmanship of the working group. This change is very big.

Liu Guangyi used the pyramid to compare the composition of the 5G industry chain participants. At the top of the pyramid are AT&T, China Mobile, South Korea's SK and other operators, followed by equipment manufacturers that can provide base stations, terminals, transmission equipment, core networks, etc., followed by component manufacturers that produce chips and base stations. And then the upstream supply chain of component suppliers, and so on, everyone is connected to form a closed-loop industrial chain. Many companies in these industrial chains have participated in the competition for 5G standards in order not to be left behind by others.

Competition on the 5G battlefield also exists within each layer of the pyramid. For example, there are currently only five companies in the world that make 5G base stations, namely Huawei, ZTE and Datang Telecom in China, Ericsson in Sweden, and Nokia in Finland. According to reports, Huawei invested a total of 4 billion yuan in product development in 2017, and this year's investment in product research and development will exceed 5 billion yuan. ZTE will invest 2 billion yuan annually for 5G R&D from 2017. Who is the first to develop, who has better performance, in the future who is more likely to get large orders from operators in China, the United States, South Korea and other countries to obtain lucrative profits.

However, Liu Guangyi believes that the more accurate statement of this race should be competition and cooperation. "Everyone has a common goal - how to make 5G successful, which requires joint efforts to create a better industrial environment and make the cake bigger. Everyone can divide a lot, this is also a competitive relationship."

Despite the competition, the unification of the 5G standard is also the trend of the times. Looking back at the history of the development of the communications industry, there are two technical standards for GSM and CDMA in the 2G era; there are four in the 3G era, namely WCDMA, CDMA2000, TD-SCDMA and Wimax; 4G is developed into an LTE standard with FDD and TDD. The standard system, the two systems above 90% of the technology are the same.

In the entire mobile communication industry chain, operators are upstream and the entrance to the entire fund. The equipment manufacturer's money comes from the operator, and the equipment manufacturer is the customer of its upstream component supplier. "If China Mobile can't make money from the market, there is no money flowing in the ecological chain. Without cash flow, the problem comes - where does the manufacturer's money come from? Then the entire ecological chain is exhausted. Equivalent to the food chain Liu Guangyi said, "If other operators see China Mobile can succeed, they can also copy, so that the entire market will become larger and larger. Everyone is a grasshopper on the rope, industrial ecology. In the chain, there are me in you, I have you in them, and no one can do it."

In an interview with China News Weekly, Huawei mentioned that they will highlight Huawei's main role when communicating with customers. This is to give customers more confidence in Huawei. However, in the overall development of 5G, Zhu Huimin, chief marketing officer of Huawei's 5G product line, said that Huawei does not want to enlarge its own aura. "The communications industry has been made aloof and monopolized. So we don't want to emphasize that we contribute the most, in fact, the result of joint cooperation."

Behind 5G heat: How to earn money?

In the global 5G industry, China is an important competitor and collaborator. Figure / fotolia

5G commercial: steady global advancement

Liu Guangyi showed China Mobile Weekly a 5G infrastructure proposal made by China Mobile in 2017 and 2018 respectively. The latest version was released in February at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

Operators combined with the 3GPP standards, solidified their understanding of 5G in the proposal, as large as the framework, as small as the base station, terminal, core network and other specific technical parameters are listed in detail. Liu Guangyi compares the operator's understanding of 5G to “building a house”, first taking the frame, then separating the house, adding the roof, considering the position of the window and the door, and considering other decorations, this is a process from coarse to fine. . He explained that the proposal serves as a guide for its upstream equipment manufacturers.

At present, the National Development and Reform Commission has approved three major operators in China to pilot the construction of 5G networks in some cities. China Mobile lists specific product requirements, and equipment manufacturers and their upstream suppliers must produce products that meet the above requirements in order to receive orders from operators. These products were put into pilot city trials to verify whether the 5G network technical parameters set by the operators are feasible. "Device manufacturers must develop products according to our requirements, so the sooner we follow us, the sooner they will develop 5G things." Liu Guangyi said.

On May 12th, Wang Zhiqin, leader of China's 5G promotion team and vice president of China's Xintong Institute, released the "5G Innovation and Development" report. According to her, 5G has entered the critical stage of international standard setting and will complete independent networking in June this year. The development of the 5G new air interface and the next-generation core network NGC standard for 5G will support enhanced broadband and low latency, high reliability scenarios. In September next year, the 5G system will meet all ITU technical requirements for 5G.

By the time the R15 standard freezes, participants in the 5G eco-chain can develop products in the final version. The next step is to wait until the terminal chip is developed, the smart terminal will be formed quickly, and 5G commercial will be ready.

At present, the three major operators in China have announced the 5G timetable. Their plans are basically the same: this year's 5G scale test will be pre-commercial next year and officially commercialized in 2020.

According to Wang Zhiqin, with the unified development of the entire standard and spectrum ecological environment, countries have also more clearly and accelerated the commercial application process of 5G. The United States, Japan and South Korea will deploy 5G applicable test networks in 2017~2018, and will deploy equipment that meets the 5G international standard in 2019. Europe also carried out 5G technology experiments in 2018.

In the process of steadily advancing 5G around the world, the government is also a force that cannot be ignored. The China Information and Communication Research Institute released the White Paper on 5G Economic and Social Impacts released in 2017, and the effective use of ICT has become an important driving force for efficiency improvement and economic structure optimization, accelerating economic development and improving labor productivity in existing industries. It is playing a key role in nurturing new markets and new growth points in the industry, achieving inclusive growth and sustainable growth.

On May 2, US Secretary of Commerce Wilber Ross publicly stated that building a 5G mobile network is the top priority of the Trump administration. The United States needs 5G, either for defensive purposes or for commercial purposes.

Qualcomm released a 5G industry report predicting that by 2035, 5G will generate 12.3 trillion US dollars of economic output globally, and the global 5G value chain will create 3.5 trillion US dollars of output, while creating 22 million jobs. The 5G value chain will spend an average of $200 billion a year, which will support long-term sustainable growth in global GDP. Qualcomm estimates that between 2020 and 2035, 5G's contribution to global GDP growth will be equivalent to that of an economy of the same size as India.

From the very beginning, 5G is no longer just serving people, the focus is on connecting things and things, and governments have raised the development of 5G to a strategic level.

In July 2016, the EU issued the “EU 5G Declaration – Promoting the timely deployment of the fifth generation mobile communication network in Europe”, which will develop 5G as a key measure for building a “single digital market”, aiming at the commercial deployment of 5G networks in Europe. Leading the world.

The 5G national strategy released by South Korea proposed to invest about US$1.43 billion, and the 5G pre-commercial test was conducted by Korea Telecom during the PyeongChang Winter Olympics.

The Chinese government is no exception. "Proactively promoting the research on the fifth-generation mobile communication (5G) and ultra-broadband key technologies and launching 5G commercialization" was included in the "13th Five-Year Plan".

Liu Guangyi told China News Weekly that the government has seen the mobile communications industry play a leading role in the whole society. Therefore, in the development of 5G, it is hoped that not only the connected industry but also the manufacturing industry will be driven. This is immeasurable for the development of the country. of.

Behind 5G heat: How to earn money?

When overwhelmingly promoting the revolutionary prospects of 5G and the application scenarios connecting all things, it is easy for people to create the illusion that 5G is close at hand. However, on April 17, Huawei’s rotating CEO Xu Zhijun said at the Huawei Global Analyst Conference in Shenzhen that although 5G technology is faster and more reliable, consumers will not find substantial differences between 5G and 4G technologies. He also said that most consumers will not notice the benefits of new technologies, and operators will find it hard to make money.

Behind 5G heat: How to earn money?

On April 21st, Fuzhou City, Fujian Province, exhibitors demonstrated high-speed D/A converters for 5G communications at the first Digital China Construction Achievements Exhibition. Figure / Zhongxin

Although the current 5G technical standards are constantly advancing and international competition is fierce, Xu Zhijun has voiced the voices of some insiders and also cut the pain points of operators.

Liu Guangyi also believes that the current global suppliers are facing the same problem - how does 5G make money? “This is equivalent to setting up 5G, but it is difficult to have new business models to make users willing to pay more. The government also requires constant fee reduction, so that the return on your investment will gradually become pessimistic. Do you still Willing to build a new base station for 5G?"

Liu Guangyi analyzed that you have increased your investment, but you will not earn more money from users, and you can only hope for vertical industry. However, the expansion of the vertical industry is a long-term process, and the government hopes that operators will build a large number of 5G networks from the national strategic level. Operators are faced with very real problems: if they can't make money, how should the investment be recovered?

This uncertainty makes operators lack the confidence to build 5G networks on a large scale. Because the 5G bandwidth is widened, the large-scale antenna array (Massive MIMO) is used, the number of antennas is increased, and the transmission network and the core network are all changed. In addition, the frequency band used by 5G is high, and the radiation radius of the base station becomes small. To increase network coverage, the number of base stations needs to be increased. In summary, the cost of building a 5G network has to be improved.

The pain point of the operator is completely understandable to Zhang Ping. In the next 5G era, China Mobile is faced with a shift in roles and profitability. In the past, China Mobile mainly benefited from consumers, but in the future, the target of acquisition is not only people but also things. He mentioned that at 4G, many value-added services were subverted because of the emergence of the mobile Internet. "For operators, it is marginalized, and operators become an information channel. The whole society has many other channels that generate benefits. Therefore, 5G is also a test for operators."

The situation of operators is similar in the United States, and there may be new difficulties from other sources, such as the situation of rising tower rents. Foreign website Fierce Wireless recently reported that the 5G era is getting closer and closer. Massive MIMO, which was first applied to 5G commercials, is larger and heavier than existing base station antennas. Therefore, many US tower companies may charge operators. Higher iron tower rent.

"From the history of mobile communication development, network coverage and business penetration are two aspects that complement each other. If there is no coverage, business penetration will be slow, and the development of the entire 5G business will be very slow." Liu Guangyi said, "5G does face a The question is whether the operator has the confidence to earn the money back and dare to deploy it on a large scale."

In his view, the situation of foreign operators is worse than that of the domestic market, and the concern about return on investment is even greater. In Europe, for example, due to the small population in Europe, the income and expenditure on 4G have just reached a balance. How to find more money to build 5G is a problem. “China benefits from having a large population. This is a rigid demand. The denser the population, the bigger the market, the better the operators are. So China, Japan and South Korea are more motivated to engage in 5G.”

In this case, telecom operators can only open source and reduce revenue. The way of throttling is to compress the cost as much as possible. At present, it is difficult to add new sites. 5G and 4G can share the resources of the tower. The technician needs to increase the transmitting power of the transmitting end and increase the number of antennas to expand the coverage.

Open source is in addition to tapping market demand, operators must also look for new business models. Industry insiders have reached a consensus that the demand for vertical industries such as the Internet of Things has not yet fully emerged in the short term. The team leader of the Digital Culture Working Group of the Interactive Media Industry Alliance of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology uses "chicken eggs, eggs and chickens" to compare the common development of 5G and vertical industries. Both equipment vendors and operators are exploring wireless technology applications in smart cars, wearables, and drones.

As early as 2016, China Mobile established the 5G Joint Innovation Center with the goal of building a win-win cooperation ecosystem through joint communications and vertical industries.

Last year, Huawei Wireless X Labs Wireless Application Scenario Lab released the 5G Top Ten Application Scenario White Paper. The white paper evaluates and analyzes the industry's dependence on 5G technology, business value, business maturity and other dimensions, and identifies the top ten scenarios that are strongly related to 5G technology and have the most commercial potential. They are: cloud VR/AR, car networking, Smart manufacturing, smart energy, wireless healthcare, wireless home entertainment, connected drones, social networking, personal AI assistants, smart cities. Some of the application scenarios have been field tested.

"The proportion of vertical industry applications will be successful, and the development of 5G will be successful. Otherwise, no money will be earned, and no one is willing to build a network." Liu Guangyi said.

Although operators are confused about the demand for 5G in the future, the R&D of 5G has not slowed down. As Xu Zhijun said, Huawei will continue to invest in 5G technology. If it does not, it will pay a price. "If you are not good at 5G, customers will not buy 4G products." He believes that operators are also like this. If one operator launches 5G network, other companies must keep up, even if they are in brand operation or marketing means. Consideration.

Liu Guangyi also admitted that the operators are taking the competition forward.

"We need to explore the vertical industry, but don't expect too much from the vertical industry." Xu Zhijun mentioned another real problem at the Huawei Global Analyst Conference. The timing of 5G from the vision to the real landing has not yet arrived.

"Any industry boss has a fear of future changes. I think he (Xu Zhijun) is right about his future, but he has to find a way to deal with it." Zhang Ping told China News Weekly.

Zhu Huimin, chief marketing officer of Huawei's 5G product line, acknowledged that exploring vertical industries is a huge prospect for Huawei, but it is difficult to succeed. She told China Newsweek, "We used to have three operators to serve hundreds of millions or even hundreds of millions of users. But the vertical industry has a feature that is fragmentation, a hospital is a customer, how many in the country Home hospitals? The programs between hospitals are different. In the vertical industry, our customers are not just three operators, but thousands of them. Their demand is very different. The demand fragment of thousands of different enterprises This is a very complicated process."

In the past, when public opinion exaggerated the changes brought about by 5G, Zhu Huimin believed that this kind of voice can help everyone build more confidence in 5G and keep the topic hot and concerned. But at this stage, the 3GPP NSA standard version has been frozen last year, and its content is only focused on serving people and solving the problem of mobile broadband demand for consumers.

Lu Zhaoming, associate professor of the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications network system construction and integration, believes that "the earliest definition of this thing (5G application scenario) is theoretical, can really be achieved, we do not know. Maybe several years After 5G commercial use, but at least so far, most of the scenes have no actual demand." He told China Newsweek, "Everyone just started to expect 5G too high, if you add anything to 5G, The development of this industry is not good. For this, people in the industry are more clear."

Liu Guangyi believes that in the early days of 5G, everyone described 5G as perfect, as if it was omnipotent, but when it comes to conducting business, it is necessary to take a rational look at this problem. The requirements for the 5G key capabilities are often conditional when implemented. It is not always possible to achieve these conditions. It should be sub-scenarios. Not all indicators need to be met in the same scenario.

In his view, the large-scale commercialization of 5G planned in 2020 means that the base station of the operator is built to a certain scale, the number of users is distributed to a certain number, and a certain typical service runs on the intelligent terminal, and it must be compared with the current 4G. Business is different. He currently believes that the most realistic scenes are: 4K, 8K Ultra HD video, some naked-eye 3D, and VR (Virtual Reality) technology for simple games and educational training.

Liu Guangyi and his team's work needs to go around the world, sometimes to communicate with manufacturers, sometimes to attend the summit, and ultimately to let more participants in the 5G industry chain hear their voices and recognize their future for 5G description of. As operators, 5G's global competition has made it impossible for them to stop, and they can only try to drive more companies to work toward the next generation of wireless networks.

5G is still in the process of being deployed, and Zhang Ping has been invited to participate in the “6G Symposium” organized by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. He said at the meeting, "5G has not yet begun. We must think about our own rhythm. What do we have to do? We must first make the foundation solid, not to create concepts, if we have not laid the foundation ourselves. That would be a real demographic. We must grasp the rhythm."

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