The United States and South Korea compete for 5G commercial starters are fighting the industrial structure

For the 5G commercial head soup, South Korea and the United States began a race. A person from a Korean operator told the First Financial Reporter about the story that happened on the evening of April 3: At 5 pm local time, the operator’s department responsible for preparing 5G services is preparing for listing activities and other preparatory work. As a result, a female employee suddenly found him in an overseas media report. The above said, "A US carrier will open 5G services in two cities in the United States on April 3."

The employee's operator immediately "played the spirit". After reporting to the company's senior management and government departments, and “spy-spy”, after considering the terminal manufacturer's agenda, it was impossible to target consumers. The opening time was advanced, but it was decided to open the "5G first-time user" originally intended to be public on the 5th to seize the title of "the first 5G country".

In fact, behind the acceleration of the 5G, it is a tough battle to upgrade the industrial structure of various countries.

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The contest between the United States and South Korea

At the ceremony, South Korean President Wen Zaiyu said, "After the broadband network and CDMA, the global launch of 5G will once again lead South Korea to dominate the global communications industry and lead South Korea in extending the industrial chain and the fourth industrial revolution. Take the lead."

On April 5th, South Korea's three major mobile operators (SKTelecom, KT, LGU+) announced the official start of 5G commercial services for ordinary consumers, and launched a 5G rate package for individual consumers, followed by a weekend of 8 days. The Korean government held a commemorative ceremony in Seoul to celebrate the official success of 5G commercialization services.

According to a report by the Korea Industrial Research Institute, there are 121 companies in Korea participating in the 5G industry chain in the “narrow sense”. Not only is this number far lower than that of China and the United States, but also some large enterprises occupy the layout of the industrial chain. The position is too important, so that the terminal is not launched, which can affect the whole process of 5G listing.

The report also pointed out that although South Korea is at the forefront of speed, due to factors from the user community, laws and regulations, if South Korea is unable to introduce "transformative" measures, it is difficult to guarantee the long-term development trend of the global 5G industry.

Kim Min-soo, general manager of content companies from South Korea, told the First Financial Reporter that although the current 5G voices are coming and going, as the content industry, considering the cost it should invest, in the context of the inability to guarantee user usage. It is difficult to introduce too many content products for the 5G market. Jin Minghao's company has a certain influence in the content industry and is listed as one of the core enterprises of the Korean 5G industry chain, and has long-term business cooperation with operators.

Coincidentally, Michael Kratisios, deputy director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, also highlighted the US's desire to win 5G global competition in an article. He wrote: "In the information age, countries that can lead the world in wireless technology will win. In order to maintain the US advantage, we must accelerate the development and deployment of 5G, which can transmit massive amounts of data at a much higher speed than 4G LTE networks. Is a global leader in 4G technology. Due to our leadership in 4G, our GDP increased by US$100 billion in 2016 alone, creating more job opportunities, reducing consumer costs and developing more advanced applications. program."

Verizon, the nation's largest telecommunications operator, announced on April 3 local time that it will launch 5G mobile communications services in parts of downtown Chicago and Minneapolis. Verizon said the company's 5G ultra-broadband network is the world's first 5G apply smart phone commercial 5G networks. Compared with South Korea's tit-for-tat, it is precisely stated that in the 5G competition, operators hope to be able to preempt the deployment of 5G networks and gain the first-mover advantage.

In September last year, US President Trump convened the United States' top four mobile communication network operators AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint executives, FCC chairman AjitPai, and legislators and President Trump's consultants to discuss how to encourage private The department invests 5G.

At the same time, the United States also released the "5GFAST" strategy, which mainly includes three major contents, namely, allocating more spectrum resources for 5G, updating infrastructure policies for 5G commercial deployment, and updating outdated regulations.

However, Jin Mingxi pointed out that in the current stage of propaganda 5G, the main emphasis is on the Internet of Things, unmanned driving and other new things, but these things are “not in a perfect stage yet”, and consumers are more difficult to see clearly. The change. "At least, under the current stage, it is difficult for me to convince consumers, I would rather pay a higher price and inconvenience, let them choose 5G services; after all, just say that opening the video for five seconds is still far from enough. "Golden Ming said so.

Power Application is the key

Power Application is the Key

In order to start with 5G and open up the popularization and application of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and driverless driving, Wen Zaiyu will invest 550 billion won to support the growth and transformation of the industrial chain.

"With reference to the example of China and the United States, it is not difficult to find that behind the development of the industry, there are not only the promotion and innovation of large enterprises, but also the great contribution of SMEs in the ecological chain. At this point, South Korea still has a large gap. Limitations, over-reliance on the innovation of a certain company, is equivalent to tying a chariot to a new industry in South Korea, which has considerable risks and unsustainability, and this situation has led to the fact that South Korea is speeding. There is a lead, but there are still some shortcomings in the setting of standards and rules." A senior official in the Korean government's industrial sector asked for anonymity told the First Financial Reporter.

It is not difficult to see that South Korea hopes to promote social 5G to create social topics and encourage industrial capital to enter emerging industries. Wen Zai said that the South Korean government will complete the 5G no-dead coverage of the whole territory by 2022, and include 550 billion won of technology investment, together with private capital to invest 30 trillion won to occupy 15% of the global 5G market. The goal is to cultivate the competitiveness of local enterprises in the international market, and to propose that in the government and public utilities, 5G should be considered as the basic factor of the network.

But an industry insider who knows the Korean telecom industry told the First Financial Reporter that South Korea was scheduled to launch 5G services in March, but due to the impact of the Galaxy S10 compatibility test, it had to be postponed until April, which is enough to reflect the Korean domestic industry in the 5G industry. The level of the chain is still relatively simple, and the trend of relying on a single company is serious.

With the freezing of 5G core standards, the construction of global 5G networks is in a fierce competition. In Asia and Europe, many countries have completed spectrum auctions. In June last year, the Ministry of Science and Technology of Korea announced the completion of the 5G spectrum auction, becoming the first country in the world to complete the 3.5GHz, 28GHz spectrum auction. The total auction revenue was 3.62 trillion won. The Italian 5G spectrum auction has a transaction volume of 6.5 billion euros (about 52 billion yuan), which is 4 billion euros higher than the initial set price.

Obviously, even in the fastest growing 5G countries, it will take time to achieve large-scale commercial use. In an investor call, Qi Guicheng, chief analyst of CITIC's communications industry, pointed out that in general, the United States, South Korea and China are in the 5G global first echelon. Before the end of 2018, the United States and South Korea have already announced 5G small-scale commercial use, so they will be slightly faster in rhythm.

China steadily advances

Compared with the US and South Korea's persistence in the "world's first", China's 5G industry is developing quite steadily.

CCTV reported that the Minister of Industry and Information Technology, Miao Wei, said at the 2019 annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia that China is expected to issue 5G licenses this year. He said that it is necessary to issue 5G licenses in a timely manner according to the maturity of the terminal.

As for large-scale commercial use, Miao Wei said that it is necessary to give enterprises a little time to build a 5G network base station nationwide to provide basic conditions for large-scale commercial use. He also pointed out that the key words of 5G development are open cooperation and unified standards. China has contributed 30% of the patent for the 5G standard.

In the process of 5G network promotion and construction, China's three major telecom operators have indicated that they should invest cautiously this year.

Yang Jie, the new chairman of China Mobile, described the challenges brought by 5G: “5G will promote revolutionary changes in network architecture, and the complexity of operation and maintenance management will continue to increase. The application of key links and vertical fields in the industry chain remains to be matured. Business models and operations The way to be innovative."

China Unicom expects capital expenditures in 2019 to be 58 billion yuan, of which 6 billion to 8 billion yuan will be used for 5G investment. Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, said: "5G has just started, this year is the first year, and it needs technical trials and commercial exploration."

Ke Ruiwen, executive director, president and chief operating officer of China Telecom, said at the 2018 financial report conference: "This year we will arrange 9 billion to conduct scale trials. The next step will be to decide whether to further expand based on the test situation, license issuance and maturity of the industry chain. Or promote commercial use."

Unlike the former two, China Mobile did not explicitly announce this year's 5G investment, saying only that “the 5G development goal is to maintain industry leadership in the construction of base stations and scale investment”. Yang Jie pointed out that without 5G investment, China Mobile's capital expenditure was 124.9 billion in 2019. "Considering 5G trial commercial investment, we will also be lower than last year's investment level of 167.1 billion."

Telecommunications analyst Fu Liang said that up to now, the conditions for issuing 5G licenses are not mature, because there are no commercial conditions in many links of the industry chain. As for the terminal, it is impossible to supply large quantities in the first half of this year, and the price is high and the problems are many. On the network side, independent networking standards have not yet been finalized.

He believes that operators can now fully experiment with 5G and prepare for commercial scale. Although on the surface, China's progress is late, operators have reduced investment risks, and users do not need to buy the first generation of high-priced and low-quality terminals.

However, the current technology of 5G is still not very mature. "The equipment is still in the process of R&D and testing. It takes a little time for industrialization. Therefore, it is not realistic for operators to build 5G networks at this stage." .