A few days ago, Wu Hequan, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said that the gap between 5G and 4G has not widened. This is undoubtedly a fig leaf for the already embarrassing 5G. It has been 3 years since 5G has been developed, but there are still considerable doubts. As a result, 5G has been controversial.
There are nearly 1.2 billion 5G package users in China, but only 651 million 5G network users, showing that nearly half of the users have used 5G packages but not 5G networks. There are many factors that lead to so many users not wanting to use 5G networks.
First of all, the coverage of the 5G network is not perfect enough. China Mobile has nearly 1.7 million 5G base stations, but the number of 4G base stations is as high as more than 2.4 million, and the coverage of 5G base stations is much smaller than that of 4G. 4G with better signal is still the preferred choice for many users, and many 5G mobile phone users choose to turn off the 5G function.
Secondly, the continuous upgrading of 5G technology has led to the continuous elimination of 5G mobile phones in the hands of users. At the beginning of 2020, the three major operators decided to build networks in the SA mode, resulting in the abandonment of more than 10 million 5G mobile phone users before; in 2021, China Mobile will start a large-scale construction 700MHz 5G network, and all 5G mobile phones will only support 700MHz in October 2021, which has led to the elimination of hundreds of millions of 5G mobile phones; at the end of last year, China Unicom obtained 900MHz for the construction of 5G networks, which in turn affected a large number of users.
Under such circumstances, consumers are at a loss when purchasing 5G mobile phones. As a result, the sales of mobile phones in the domestic market have been declining since the commercial use of 5G. Consumers are increasingly holding a wait-and-see attitude towards mobile phones, hoping to wait for the improvement of 5G networks and 5G mobile phone technology.
Now academician Wu Hequan pointed out that the gap between 5G and 4G has not widened, and undoubtedly further torn off the fig leaf of 5G. He said this because the current 5G downlink speed is only 7 times that of 4G, while the uplink speed is only 2.8 times that of 4G, which is far from the 5G theory. The rate is 100 times that of 4G, which is a considerable technical upgrade.
In fact, as operators begin to aggressively build 700MHz and 900MHz 5G networks, the rate of 5G will further decrease. Since the spectrum resources of these two low-frequency bands are quite limited, the rate will not be much faster than 4G, and may even be worse than 4G+. Not far away, this is even more unable to show its technical advantages for 5G.
Operators are building low-frequency 5G on a large scale, but it is actually a helpless move. Due to the previous construction of 5G networks in high-frequency bands, it was found that the investment was too high; the operating costs of 5G networks were also too high. Industry insiders pointed out that the power consumption of 5G base stations is almost 2-3 times that of 4G, causing operators to have to turn off 5G during idle periods. network. These problems can be solved by using low-frequency frequency bands. The coverage of low-frequency frequency bands is wider, which can greatly reduce the number of 5G base station constructions, and the operating costs will also be greatly reduced.
The development of 5G is still facing the problem of lack of just-needed applications. Many current applications do not require 5G, and 4G is also capable. Moreover, the original 4G package is cheaper for mobile phone users, which also makes the remaining users unwilling to switch to 5G. With 5G packages, users who have switched to 5G packages hope to switch back to 4G packages, but due to many restrictions set by operators, users have complained.
It is now the fourth year of 5G commercial use, but there are still so many controversies about 5G, which highlights the many weaknesses of 5G technology itself. Operators still need to work hard to promote 5G commercial success, and users are obviously Gradually losing patience, where is the future of 5G development?