Although the United States lost in the starting line in the 5G era, it is still unclear whether it can be post-production. 5G is a long-distance running, and the last one is the real winner.

Editor’s note: This article is from “Tencent Technology”, author Party A Research Institute, Exclusively launched Tencent Technology, without authorization, may not be reproduced.

Basic focus

  • 1 The US 5G layout is sluggish, and the spectrum is the “difficulty” for the US to develop 5G. At present, all frequency bands below 6 GHz in the United States are used by the military, which directly encourages the United States to use only millimeter waves for 5G testing and commercial deployment.

  • 2 The United States once led the telecommunications industry for a long time, but in the past 20 years, the United States has changed from a leader in the telecommunications industry to almost completely out of the telecommunications equipment manufacturing industry.

  • 3 Layout 5G, the construction of US base stations has always been its weakness, which has a great relationship with the US private land system. Since the land is private, operators need high communication costs when building base stations.

Deloit’s 5G report points out that 5G will be the biggest opportunity in the next 10 years: 5G is not only an extension of 4G, but also enables the connection and interaction of almost any type of billions of devices and data, thus leading Consumers, industries and governments are moving into new areas of productivity and innovation.

The huge potential of 5G allows participants to be delighted and feel the pressure they have never experienced before. On the eve of the 5G mass commercial, all players are rushing to compete for initiative. Party A Research Institute will sort out the 5G layouts of the first echelon of the United States, Europe, Japan, South Korea and China. Who can laugh at the final in this technology competition leading to the future?

The first period: The overlord fell to the altar, is there a chance to change his life?

The 5G showdown, the United States has set a goal of “not winning.” US President Trump once yelled “In the powerful future industry of 5G, we cannot allow any country to surpass the United States…” In order to win this competition, the US government launched a series of investment plans: 275 billion US dollars in the wireless industry Building a 5G network and quickly creating 3 million jobs, adding $500 billion in economic benefits to the United States.

In December 2018, the United States became the second 5G commercial country after South Korea. But this can’t change the fact that the US is slow in the 5G era. Insufficient spectrum resources, wirelessOn 5G, we are also leading the world for at least two or three years. “The United States is anxious.

02.Why did the US 5G fall to the altar?

In the 5G era, the United States once again was left behind by competitors because of its “unconventionality”. What is the reason?

First, spectrum resources are the primary problem. The US 5G layout is sluggish, and the spectrum is the “difficulty” for the US to develop 5G. There are two major spectrum disputes in 5G: the middle and low frequency spectrum is sub-6, and the high frequency spectrum is commonly called millimeter wave. Due to historical reasons, the current frequency bands below 6 GHz in the United States are all used by the military, which directly prompted the United States to use only millimeter waves for 5G testing and commercial deployment. The mid-low frequency band has a long coverage distance, a small attenuation, and good diffraction performance; the high frequency band is the opposite.

Deploying mid-range 5G spectrum on existing cellular networks is much more economical than trying to deploy thousands of millimeter-wave small base stations to provide some form of continuous network coverage and experience. Although the United States leads the 5G millimeter wave, the coverage of the millimeter wave base station is too small, and the investment is too large to form scale coverage.

According to the evaluation report of the research company iGR, if each millimeter wave base station covers a distance of 300 meters, 5G needs to achieve a scale covering a city, such as Los Angeles, which requires 18,000 millimeter wave base stations, and the deployment cost per base station is 35000. The US dollar (including main equipment, power supply, return and other costs) will cost a total of 630 million US dollars.

This is just an outdoor coverage. In fact, millimeter-wave signals can hardly enter the room. In April of this year, Verizon and T-Mobile had publicly stated that even with 5G network signals, it is difficult to cover every corner of the country. Neville Ray, T-Mobile’s chief technology officer, also mentioned that although millimeter waves are impressive in terms of speed, they can’t move away from the tower and are less likely to pass through buildings or obstacles.

5G The United States of the Romance: The Overlord fell to the Altar, how many chances to change his life?

The United States is at the fork of 5G, and it is difficult to choose which direction. If you continue to stick to its spectrum allocation plan, the four major operators in the United States will invest 400 billion US dollars to build 13 million base stations to meet the needs of 5G networks in the United States. If you consider international standards, the sub-6 used in the current defense system. For civilian use, it takes about ten years to completely change frequency. If you do not consider the security of the military network, the same as the military network, the civilian network and the military network use sub-6, it will take at least five years to achieve the integration of the two.

Second, the telecommunications industry is declining and ecological faults are serious. The fall of the 5G era is also a sign of the decline of the US telecommunications industry. From the US, they also have 5G terminal solution providers (Qualcomm), but no 5G telecom equipment manufacturers.

One is that the US telecommunications industry is experiencing a declining trend. In the 5G era, there is no telecommunications equipment supplier in the United States that can compete with Nokia, Ericsson, and Huawei. It is known that there are currently four companies in the world. 5G telecom equipment manufacturers: Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia, and ZTE. Cisco, a wireless communications company, used to be a well-known telecommunications equipment provider, but its business has increasingly turned to software and network security and cloud services rather than building its own core communications network.

O&T; Verizon and Sprint operators still need to rely on cooperation with Nokia, Ericsson and Samsung to provide telecom equipment. Bill Huang, a Chinese-American telecom industry expert, once said that the United States has long led the telecommunications industry, but in the past 20 years, the United States has changed from a leader in the telecommunications industry to almost completely out of the telecommunications equipment manufacturing industry. To date, no US company has been able to manufacture the equipment needed to build a new generation of wireless networks.

The third is system and law constraints. Layout 5G, the construction of US base stations has always been its weakness, which has a great relationship with the US private land system. Since the land is private, operators need high communication costs when building base stations. Moreover, when US operators conduct network construction in different states, they will also involve the land owned by the state government, which requires various policies to support.

5G The United States of the Romance: The Overlord fell to the Altar, how many chances to change his life?

Consumer rights protectors worry that the enthusiasm for 5G is undermining public oversight of the wireless industry. For example, the FCC removed its network neutrality protection in 2017, and it is doubtful that less regulation will lead to more investment in 5G and other broadband infrastructure.

In 2018, the FCC voted to veto state and local regulations on wireless device placement to help operators build 5G networks faster. Chinese government departments provide bandwidth for 5G networks almost free of charge.

In contrast, according to data from the US Federal Communications Commission (FTC), US carriers spent $2.7 billion on two 5G spectrum auctions.

In India, industry organizations representing operators say their members are unable to afford a spectrum auction that is expected to reach $84 billion.

Harold Feld, vice president of consumer organization Public Knowledg, warned that if there is no regulation, operators may choose not to build 5G networks in low-income or rural areas, as this may reduce profits. rate.

5G The United States of the Romance: The Overlord fell to the Altar, how many chances to change his life?

03.Accelerate the layout, where is the US opportunity?

The speed is not up, and to avoid the 5G era, solid foundation is the primary task. On April 12, 2018, the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced two plans to accelerate the construction of 5G networks:

1. Beginning on December 10, 2019, the United States will launch the largest spectrum auction in history, involving a total of 3400M spectrum resources in the 37 GHz, 39 GHz and 47 GHz bands. In November 2018, the FCC conducted the first spectrum auction for 5G. Since different forms of information are transmitted using electromagnetic waves of different frequencies, each frequency band in the spectrum can only be used by one mobile communication technology. The right to use the open 5G spectrum illustrates the construction period of the 5G network infrastructure. turning on.

At present, the FCC has completed the licensing auction for the 28 GHz band and the 24 GHz band. In December of this year, the FCC will also auction the 37GHz, 39GHz and 47GHz bands, known as “the largest spectrum auction in US history.”

To provide 5G services, US carriers must first spend billions or even tens of billions of dollars on spectrum purchases. This part of the cost increases the difficulty for operators to build networks and implement universal services, and will eventually be passed on to users, pushing up the cost of 5G use and affecting the commercial promotion of 5G.

Before this, in the 2015 AWS-3 spectrum auction, the operator paid $44 billion, and in 2017 the 600M band auction, the operator paid about $20 billion.

2. The United States will set up a $20.4 billion Rural Digital Opportunity Fund to support the development of rural broadband networks in the next decade and promote the deployment of high-speed broadband networks to 4 million homes in the United States.

In order to promote operators to build more base stations, the government reduces the cost of operators and reduces their pressure through direct subsidies or indirect policies.

In the United States, a major geographical feature is that rural areas are sparsely populated, and this has led operators to spend the same cost in these areas.The base station covers fewer people and receives less revenue. For such a cost-effective thing, large operators are not interested. The fund project will use some funds from the US Telecom Universal Service Fund to set a price cap for the operator and then subsidize it.

As a result, operators will have more incentives to build base stations in rural areas. At the same time, the US government has also reduced operator costs by revising outdated regulations, such as to reduce costs and speed up the deployment of 5G backhaul. The FCC has updated regulations on installing new network equipment onto utility poles.

In the face of a series of embarrassing situations, the US government is taking radical measures to push forward 5G. 3. The operators are working hard. On May 20th, the FCC announced that it would support the merger of T-Mobile, the third largest operator in the US, and Sprint, the four major operators, to accelerate the construction of 5G networks in the United States. The merger of T-Mobile and Sprint has always been regarded by the industry as one of the keys to determining whether the US 5G can lead the world.

5G The United States of the Romance: The Overlord fell to the Altar, how many chances to change his life?

T-Mobile and Sprint merge to just fill the gap. Sprint has a 2.5GHz mid-range. T-Mobile has a 600MHz low-band and millimeter-wave high-band. The two operators can use the low-, medium- and high-band three-layer networking. 600MHz for overlay, 2.5GHz for capacity layer, millimeter wave for high-capacity layer (hotspot), both wide network coverage and thick network capacity, so that a nationwide wide coverage and large capacity can be built. 5G network.

Conclusion

The United States is lagging behind on 5G, but it is undeniable that the United States is still a heavyweight player that cannot be ignored. Originally, the current international value chain formation, supply chain and industrial chain division are controlled by Western developed countries. American multinational corporations occupy a dominant position and have the right to speak and distribute interests. At the same time, the United States has a unique and fundamental advantage in promoting the development of 5G. Many technology companies with industrial leadership status are the capital of the United States to navigate the 5G voyage.

Qualcomm’s demand directly affects the food and clothing of downstream mobile phone manufacturers; intel keeps the PC industry warm and cold; Apple’s mobile phone parts are supplied by nearly a thousand companies in dozens of countries, but Apple is in standard setting, independent patent and The right to speak in terms of innovation capability is enough to be the leader in this industry chain.

The United States lost in the starting line in the 5G era, but can itAfter the birth, it is still unknown that 5G is a long-distance running, and the last winner is the real winner.