Recently, at the annual general meeting of China Mobile shareholders, China Mobile Chairman Yang Jie said that in promoting the development of 5G convergence, China Mobile is actively promoting the 5G+ plan, at the same time, Yang Jie believes that the mainland regulators will officially issue 5G licenses this year.
There are many different opinions inside and outside the industry about the issuance time of 5G license, and Yang Jie's statement can be said to give everyone a preliminary 5G license schedule.
The reason for this is that the investment and construction of 5G networks is very complex, and it takes a long time to test, validate and plan in detail the design of a brand new mobile network. 5G spectrum is landed first, which gives operators sufficient time to prepare.
It is no coincidence that Wenku, director of the Information and Communication Development Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, recently attended the State Council's regular policy briefing to answer questions from reporters about the timing of the issuance of 5G licenses. Although Wenku did not directly state the specific time, he pointed out that the development of China's 5G technology and products is becoming more and more mature, and the system, chip and terminal of the whole industry has basically reached the commercial level. Next, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will continue to improve the policy environment and promote the relevant enterprises to strengthen collaboration to help the successful commercialization of 5G. It can be said that the development of the commercial level of the relevant industries has solidified the foundation for the construction of 5G networks and provided the necessary conditions for the issuance of 5G licenses.
From the above, it can be predicted that the issuance of 5G licenses in China in 2019 may already be a nail-biting event.
Once the 5G license is issued, it will not only accelerate the new development of cloud computing, big data and other industries, but also help to promote operators to increase the total amount of 5G investment and build the base stations and other facilities needed for 5G.
5G-related industries: 5G, which enables the Internet of Everything, will be closely integrated with new information technologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, cloud computing, big data and edge computing to provide users with multi-scene application services such as 5G+medicine, 5G+transportation and 5G+smart city.
5G investment: A report previously released by the China Academy of Information and Communication Technology shows that the total economic output directly driven by the commercialization of 5G in China is expected to reach 10.6 trillion yuan between 2020 and 2025, and the added value of the economy created directly reaches 3.3 trillion yuan. The data shows that compared to the previous cumulative investment in 4G of about 850 billion yuan, the three major operators expect total investment in 5G infrastructure to reach 1.2-1.5 trillion yuan.
In terms of 5G base stations: the number of 5G base stations will be 1.5-2 times that of 4G base stations, and the number of small base stations will be 2 times that of macro stations.
It is worth noting that the increased density of 5G base stations and potential multi-frequency networking solutions will consume a large amount of optical fiber, which provides a certain market space for China's fiber optic cable industry. However, according to Yang Jie's prediction, 2020 to 2022 will be the peak period for 5G investment. As the saying goes, Rome was not built in a day, the fiber optic cable industry or at least in the next 3-5 years to really enjoy this wave of 5G dividends.