What successful experience and lessons have been brought to operators and users in the 3 years of 5G commercial use?

It has been three years since 5G was commercially available. Although operators announced that 5G package users have exceeded 1 billion, there are only more than 500 million 5G network users. What lessons does the result of 5G commercial use bring to the industry?

For operators, communication equipment manufacturers have vowed that 5G, which uses many innovative technologies, can also achieve good network coverage in high-frequency bands. However, the actual operating results of operators in China and the United States show that all this There is no way to break through the physical limitations of frequency bands.

The United States once intended to develop 5G millimeter wave technology, but American operators found that 5G millimeter wave technology is not economical at all. American operators only use 5G millimeter wave as the last mile of fixed-line broadband to access home users, and do not use 5G Millimeter wave technology builds 5G network.

Therefore, 5G centimeter wave is expected to be high. Industry experts once said that 5G’s medium and high frequency bands plus 64T64R and other multi-antenna technologies can achieve 1.8GHz 4G coverage. However, in the construction of 5G networks, it is pointed out that 3.5GHz is used to build 5G The network has led to a very high density of 5G base stations. A 5G base station has to be built almost every 500 meters. invest.

Subsequently, Chinese operators began to try to build 5G in low-frequency bands. China Mobile and China Radio and Television began building 700MHz 5G networks last year. Recently, China Unicom also began to build 5G networks in 900MHz bands. Coincidentally, American operators AT&T and T-MOBIL also build 5G networks in low-frequency bands, while Verizon builds 5G networks in 3.5GHz. As a result, more users recognize AT&T than Verizon, because AT&T’s 5G network coverage is better , even though AT&T has been criticized for fake 5G.

The constant changes in 5G technology have brought troubles to operators, and it has also brought troubles to mobile phone users. In 2019, Chinese operators all used 5G NSA to build 5G networks, which can save the construction cost of 5G networks. However, in 2020, they suddenly abandoned 5G NSA and started to build 5G networks with 5G SA.

This led to the abandonment of the first 5G mobile phone users. Most of the more than 10 million 5G mobile phones in 2019 only supported 5G NSA, which made the first batch of 5G mobile phone users become guinea pigs. Batch after batch of mobile phone users have become guinea pigs.

In 2021, China Mobile and China Radio and Television will jointly build 700MHz 5G. China Mobile requires all 5G mobile phones to support 700MHz 5G from October 2021. Under the strong request of China Mobile, all domestic mobile phones will not support 700MHz 5G until October 2021. This has led to more than 300 million mobile phones that do not support 700MHz 5G being abandoned again. Failure to support 700MHz 5G means that you cannot enjoy a smooth 5G network in corner areas such as urban toilets and rural areas.

One year later, China Unicom obtained the use of 900MHz for 5G network construction, and most of the mobile phones currently on sale, except for limited mobile phone models such as Apple, do not support 900MHz 5G, which means that China Telecom and China Another batch of 5G mobile phone users on China Unicom’s network has been abandoned.

It can be seen that the development of 5G has proved that technological innovation has failed to solve the physical limitations of radiation and weak diffraction capabilities in high-frequency bands, and eventually forced operators to switch back to low-frequency bands to build 5G networks, which also led to batch after batch. A batch of 5G mobile phone users have been abandoned. Among these mobile phones, only a limited number of mobile phones such as Apple’s iPhone have always supported various 5G frequency bands. Apple’s first 5G version iPhone 12 released in 2020 began to support 17 5G frequency bands, becoming Among the 5G mobile phones in the world, it supports the most and most complete 5G frequency bands.