Foreign media reported that Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s internal affairs minister, said on Oct. 11 that Japan will develop basic strategy for the construction of the super speed fifth generation mobile communication system “5G”. Coincidently, Alexander Dobrindt, minister of the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure of Germany, recently proposed to promote the development of 5G development in Germany. The research report lately issued by the EU shows that EU members’ investment in 5G is expected to reach 56 billion euros by 2020.This reflects that countries around the globe are attaching great importance to 5G. For China, the first stage of main performance test for 5G has completed, and is expected to put into commercial operation in 2020. China has already established leading position in 5G technology R&D, and this technology is expected to be a new brand for “intelligent manufacturing in China”.
5G era comes closer with the advancement of 5G technology
Sanae Takaichi said that to ensure the bandwidth of all frequencies, the Japanese government will start discussion from the Information and Communications Technology Council (advisory body to Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs) to be held on Oct. 12, and gather the opinions around the summer of 2017, to promote the practical application of the technology.
It is learnt that the communication speed of 5G is estimated to be 100 times faster than the current high-speed communication LTD. In the Internet of things society where devices are connected through networks, 5G as a basic technology is highly expected. In order to provide proper frequencies for various services such as unmanned driving and healthcare, relevant discussion will be held in the future.
Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs reportedly advances the R&D with the target of realizing the practical application of 5G in 2020, and it plans to start empirical study across the nation from 2017. The U.S., Europe and China are all actively taking measures for the popularization of 5G.
Dobrindt proposes to introduce a strategy that promotes the development of 5G in Germany. The strategy consisted of 5 steps: first, make a framework for the commercialization of 5G from now on till 2018; second, build a dialogue forum for the telecom industry and application industry; third, promote 5G research, promoting Germany to gain technological advantage and participating in the preparation of global 5G standard in the future; fourth, develop application projects, such as 5G experimental city, for which the federal government will contribute 20 billion euros, and the more than 80 million euro unmanned driving vehicle project is also expected to boost the development of 5G; fifthly, promote infrastructure construction, and try to realize 5G coverage in all federal main streets and 20 big cities by 2025. Dobrindt says that 5G will become the digital core technology in the network era, and Germany hopes to become the leading player of 5G.
In September, the European Commission formally issued the 5G for Europe: An Action Plan. It indicates that EU has entered the trial and deployment planning stage, as well as a response to the U.S.’s 5G plan announced earlier.
As to the U.S., the U.S. government in this July broke a path for the next generation wireless network service: distribute a number of frequency spectrums for 5G network. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) unanimously agreed to open the 11GHz high-frequency spectrum to mobile, flexible and fixed use wireless broadband. Telecom operators such as Verizon and AT&T have started to develop 5G technology. The network speed of 5G is expected to be 10 to 100 times that of 4G network.
The EU issued a research report on the costs of 5G deployment and its social and economic benefits recently. The report says that by 2020, EU members’ investment in deploying 5G will reach 56 billion euros. But the social and economic benefits are expected to reach 113.1 billion euros per year by 2025.
China accelerates development of 5G, building it as new brand for“intelligent manufacturing in China”
China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) lately announced that the first stage of main performance test of 5G has completed, and the test in the second phase will focus on the R&D and experiments on wireless air interface and network technical plan, which is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017. Subsequently, the 5G network construction will be started, and estimated to be ready for commercial use by 2020. Industry insiders estimated that the total investment of the three biggest telecom operators in China will exceed 300 billion yuan.
5G is the fifth generation mobile communication technology. It can provide new experience in comparison with 4G. As to network speed, 5G is 12 times faster than that of 4G, and the number for the devices connected also increased significantly. In the future, people can enjoy high speed data transmission and conveniences brought by automation, which are only seen in movie before.
According to the overall deployment of the MIIT, China’s 5G basic R&D experiments will be carried out from 2016 to 2018, which include three stages: key technology test of 5G, technical verification of 5G and system verification of 5G.
So far, China has already established a leading position in 5G area, due to firstly, China is among the forerunners in standard and patent deployment. As to the 5G standard, IMT-2020（5G）promotion team has become a standard organization ranking next only to joint team formed by Europe’s METI and 5GPP; secondly, China’s process of 5G commercialization has been neck to neck with Japan and South Korea; thirdly, Chinese enterprises’ strength has increased continuously.
China also boasts other unique advantages, such as huge user scale. Data shows that China has currently built the largest 4G network in the world, with more than 2 million base stations and 500 million users. Besides, half of the Chinese population is still not internet users. The huge demand for application and potential of development also laid a solid foundation for the arrival of 5G era.
Various market institutions estimated that China’s three telecom operators are likely to start 5G network construction in 2018, according to the deployment of the MIIT and the telecom operators. In the first step, 5G network will cover major big and medium-sized cities; in the second phase, cover major regions in the nation. According to the experience in the past, the three telecom operators’ investment for network construction in the first two stages will be no less than that of 4G, with a total of more than 300 billion yuan.
Translated by Adam Zhang
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