For equipment providers, 5G is like a marathon. Only competitive and calm players can laugh last with huge rewards and returns.
A marathon has to provide huge returns to attract leading players. For the competition of 5G, the huge business potential is the returns to winners.
Why the business potential of 5G is huge? In the general infrastructure sector, industries will automatically adapt to a new technology when it is mature, which will result in various new technologies.
“China will explore new paths in the integration and innovation of 5G and vertical industries”, indicated Chen Zhaoxiong, Vice Minister of Industry and Information Technology, at the 2017 IMT-2020 (5G) Summit.
Some still do not understand it. Let’s look at the history of technology.
Take the steam engine as an example. James Watt improved the steam engine around 1785 for mass application. The steam engine drove the economic growth in following decades. George Stephenson invented the steam engine train in 1814. People firstly tool trains 40 years later in 1825 after the invention of the steam engine train.
As for power, Michael Faraday invented the electric motor in 1831 and Nikola Tesla invented the alternator in 1882. General Electric Company was established in 1892. Lights, telegraphs, telephones, TVs, electric vehicles and other industries emerged based on power.
It is the same with mobile phones. IBM introduced the first smart mobile phone Simon in 1993. Apple Inc. released the first generation of iPhone in 2007. Many vertical apps developed with mobile phones. WeChat, Didi and other apps are no exceptions.
The network speed will be significantly improved after the application of 5G technologies. The market potential of integration and innovation will be huge. Companies with core 5G technologies will receive huge patent fees in a fairly long term.
“It should conduct technical study on 5G earlier. Later comers will lose the opportunity to adopt their technologies into the standards. Currently, most 5G participants are leaders in the industry. Ordinary players are hard to gain favorable positions.” Zhu Fusheng, Chief Engineer of ZTE Corporation, indicated at the 2017 IMT-2020 (5G) Summit held recently.
Zhu indicated that ZTE initiated the preparation for 5G five years ago.
The symposium on wireless communication technology under the 863 Program during the 12th Five-year Plan Period was held in November 2012. It is the first formal symposium on 5G technology in China. Zhu participated in the symposium and discussed the development trend of the technology and the industry. It kicked off the technical study on 5G in China.
The group on promoting IMT-2020 (5G) was established in February 2013 with ZTE as a member. The group is responsible for learning about core 5G demands, identifying key 5G technologies and studying available 5G frequency spectrum. China has started to promote 5G systematically since then.
Based on the latest statistics disclosed, ZTE has applied more than 1,500 patents on 5G as at the end of 2016.
“The marathon has kicked off and we should have firm targets. We will follow the orientation of 5G and provide technical convenience to most users.” Zhu indicated.
As a result, ZTE proposed the concept of Pre 5G in 2014.
“The core of the Pre 5G is to apply 5G technologies in advance to significantly improve the performance of 4G network and users of 4G terminals can obtain similar experiences as 5G.” Zhu emphasized.
On the one hand, it can increase the LTE network by four to six times and effectively solve the two biggest problems faced by operators before the large-sized application of 5G, namely the conflict between limited frequency spectrum resources and the rapid development MBB and the capacity expansion and disturbance with huge number of people.
On the other hand, it considers the network investment made by operators. They can upgrade relevant equipment and technology and continue to use them.
The Pre 5G of ZTE has been applied in over 40 networks in 30 countries so far.
“Pre 5G technologies have made profits and we will continue to invest in 5G”, said Zhu confidently.
Professional players will dash when approaching the finishing line.
Leading players like ZTE would be more likely to win if the application of 5G technologies is advanced.
The 75th meeting of the 3GPP passed the proposal on speeding up the application of 5G in March 2017. Based on the proposal, the standards on new non-independent ports for 5G will be completed in December 2017 and frozen in March 2018.
It will promote certain operators achieving large-sized experiment and application of new 5G ports in 2019.
It was previously estimated that 5G will be put into commercial operation in 2020.
Therefore, leading players have made continuous efforts in 5G in previous years, but they also controlled the space to prevent affecting the receiving of 4G results.
In other words, they will seek profits from 5G and 4G at the same time.
For those have not developed 5G, it would be terrible. The competition may end when you are about to speed up.
ZTE, an enthusiast for 5G technologies, is certainly to benefit from the changes in the situation.
Translated by Star Zhang
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