China'S 5G Business Is Officially Launched: Content Tariff To Be Improved, Force SA Commercial At That Time

Following the landing of the 5G licence in June this year, the long process of commercialization of China's 5G has finally been officially unveiled.

On the morning of October 31st, at the opening ceremony of China International Information and Communication Exhibition in 2019, Chen Zhaoxiong, Vice Minister of the Ministry of industry and commerce, announced that the 5G business was officially launched. Chen Zhaoxiong said that at present, the domestic 5g business process is speeding up, and urban areas such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Hangzhou have achieved continuous coverage. It is expected that 130000 5g base stations will be opened nationwide by the end of this year.

Subsequently, the Ministry of industry and Commerce jointly launched the 5G business launching ceremony with the three operators and the Chinese tower. The 5G packages of the major operators were also on time, starting at a price of 128 yuan and will be officially launched in November 1st.

At the opening ceremony, Ding Yun, executive director of HUAWEI and BG, President of the operator, announced that it was also launched in November 1st, with Unicorn 9905G SoC, and SA/NSA 5G dual mode HUAWEI Mate30 series 5G mobile phones. In addition, Ding Yun revealed that Huawei will also release VR glasses and other terminal devices in the future to support 5g experience.

"The official business of 5G, in fact, means that 5G can develop users and begin to bring formal gains." Referring to the value point of 5G commercialization, independent telecommunications analyst Fu Liang explained to the twenty-first Century economic news reporter. "The previous 5G license issuance does not mean that users can be developed immediately, but also needs a series of actions such as tariff packages set by network operators. Now 5G has just started to officially push users."

5G package

In June 6th of this year, the Ministry of industry and Commerce issued 5G commercial licenses to China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Radio and television. Since September 29, the three operators have launched 5g package booking activities. At present, the number of appointments has exceeded ten million.

Today, the 5G packages of operators have finally unveiled the mystery. It is understood that the personal 5g package launched by China Mobile is divided into five categories, with prices ranging from 128 yuan to 598 yuan. Among them, the lowest 128 yuan package includes 30GB traffic and 200 minute call, and 598 yuan package includes 300gb traffic and 3000 minute call.

China Telecom's 5G packages are divided into 7 grades, ranging from 129 yuan /30GB/500 minutes per month to 599 yuan /300GB/3000 minutes. The 5g package of China Unicom is divided into comfortable version and excellent version. The price of comfortable version ranges from 129 yuan / 30GB / 500 minutes per month to 199 yuan / 60GB / 1000 minutes, 299 yuan / 100GB / 1500 minutes and 599 yuan / 300gb / 3000 minutes.

At the lowest price, the 5g packages of major operators are really amazing. "It's not as high as you think," Fu Liang commented to 21st century economic news. "It should be said that this price is a taste price in the initial stage, or it's more affordable."

Although the price of the package itself is not high enough, users are still not necessarily able to survive due to the characteristics of the 5G application scenario.

"The transmission rate of 5G is at least 100 times that of the past, and the future 5G can support naked eye 3D, AR/VR, 4K HD video and other application scenarios." "A user who really wants to experience VR games, 4K videos, and so on, is not able to use 30GB for a few days at the minimum package," he said to a twenty-first Century correspondent for economic reporting. "Under these scenarios, we need several megabits per second."

The person also pointed out that the current 5G package has been launched, but its tariff system is much the same as that of 4G. It is still based on calls, SMS and traffic. In the real 5g era, the tariff package should be bound to the content and more flexible.

"You can differentiate the fees around VR games, HD videos, and recommend the most matching data model. For example, online games need a certain rendering ability, with higher requirements for bandwidth delay, so that high bandwidth channels can be opened pertinently, and users who do not play online games do not need to choose this function. " The above suggestion suggests that "customized 5G packages need to be explored."

However, from the present point of view, there is still a long way to go to customize content and services. "This is a gradual process, which not only requires a lot of background tariff system transformation, but also needs to build and bind a mature ecosystem." The person told the twenty-first Century economic news reporter, "in general, the technology level has been able to achieve this idea, but how the tariff remains to be decided by the operators."

Popularization still remains to be seen.

Not only the user level is difficult to absorb the current 5G tariff, but also the 5G experience that is really perfect from infrastructure.

On the same day, the Ministry predicted that 130 thousand 5G base stations will be opened by the end of this year. Operators also disclosed the latest list of 5g commercial cities, with a total of 50 cities listed in the first batch of 5g cities.

But compared with 4G base stations, this figure is not obvious. Data shows that as of June this year, China Mobile 4G base stations have reached 2.41 million. By the end of 2018, China Telecom and China Unicom had 1.38 million and 990000 4G base stations respectively.

In addition to the fact that the size of the digital scale has not yet been compared with that of 4G, "the 5G band is even higher, and the base area that a base station can cover is smaller," Fu Liang told the economic news reporters in twenty-first Century. "Therefore, in the 50 cities selected for the first batch of 5G cities, only partial continuous coverage can be formed."

In fact, even the construction of 3G and 4G operators in the past has gone through more than five years of construction. "5g will not go anywhere fast," Fu Liang told 21st century economic news. "At present, 5g will be more applied to the areas with high demand for time delay, such as people flow or industrial application scenarios."

Long term construction means a lot of investment. Therefore, in Ding Yun's view, operators need to use the funds on the cutting edge, quickly identify the value area, improve the efficiency of network construction, and obtain the best investment income.

Ding Yun pointed out that building the best 5G must firmly follow the road of SA (independent Networking). "In order to realize the SLA based B2B network requirements, it is necessary to support the end-to-end slicing from the core network, the bearer network to the access network. In some scenarios, edge computing is also used. Therefore, 5g's features for thousands of lines and hundreds of industries can be brought into full play only under the SA networking architecture. "

"SA has five advantages, including uplink large bandwidth, low latency, E2E slicing, edge computing of distributed architecture, and content billing," explains Zhu Liang, senior manager of HUAWEI China's operator market management department, explaining to the twenty-first Century economic correspondent, "the commercial capability of SA is ready now, and SA has arrived at the best time."