FSCA-01RS-485Since June 6, 2019, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Broadcasting and Television, and since the “industrial Internet” was written into the “Government Work Report” in the same year, “5G+ Industrial Internet” has been developing rapidly in China for 5 years.
In the past five years, the domestic 5G construction has been promoted with a “moderately advanced” strategy, with a cumulative investment of more than 730 billion yuan, and the industrial Internet has also become an important project for local governments to attract investment.
However, in the eyes of ordinary users, 5G has not spawned new applications in addition to bringing faster network speeds. At the same time, the “high temperature” of the industrial Internet is also declining. Therefore, there is no shortage of voices in the industry to question whether the development of 5G has been prematurely promoted and whether “5G+ industrial Internet” is a false proposition.
So what is the truth?
5G commercial second half
The industry generally takes every ten years as the development cycle of a generation of mobile communication networks, and 5G is now commercially available for five years, both in ToC (client side) and ToB (industry side). When 5G enters the second half, the ToB end has become the main battlefield for all parties in the industry.
According to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information TechnolFSCA-01RS-485ogy, as of the end of April 2024, China has built a total of 3.748 million 5G base stations, with more than 26 5G base stations per 10,000 people, and 5G network continues to advance from “county to county” to “village to village”; More than 90% of 5G base stations have been jointly built and shared, and the energy consumption of 5G base stations has decreased by 20% compared with the initial commercial phase. More than 30,000 5G industry private networks have been built; 5G standard necessary patent claims accounted for more than 42% of the world; 5G has achieved scale replication in key industries such as mining, power, and medical care, and 5G applications in the industrial field have gradually deepened from peripheral links to core links such as research and development, design, and manufacturing.
“Looking back at the first half of 5G development, the number of 5G base stations, users and user penetration rate in China leads the world, the average download rate of mobile broadband has exceeded fixed broadband, and the enabling value created by 5G has been highly recognized by society.” Wu Hequan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said at the 2024 Mobile Communication high-quality Development Forum held on June 6.
In the first half of 5G, ToB side business has begun to emerge and show a rapid climb. According to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in the past five years of 5G commercial use, 5G applications have been integrated into 74 of 97 national economic categories, the number of application cases exceeds 94,000, the number of 5G FSCA-01RS-485industry virtual private networks exceeds 29,000, and the number of “5G+ industrial Internet” projects exceeds 10,000. At present, 5G industry applications are accelerating the penetration of core control links, of which industrial Internet integration applications have expanded to 49 national economic categories, and the number of “5G+ Industrial Internet” projects has exceeded 13,000, forming more than 200 industrial Internet demonstration application benchmarks.
According to the estimates of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, since the commercial use of 5G, it has directly driven the total economic output of about 5.6 trillion yuan and indirectly driven the total output of about 14 trillion yuan, which has effectively promoted the high-quality economic and social development.
In 5G construction, the “moderate advance” strategy ensures that the network infrastructure can match or even stimulate market demand, thereby avoiding missing business opportunities due to the lag in network construction. 5G has not only become a key infrastructure to support the digital and intelligent transformation of the economy and society, but also to promote the optimization and upgrading of industrial structure.
Local deployment acceleration
With 5G enabled, digital and real integration is accelerating. At the 2024 Mobile Communication High-quality Development Forum held on June 6, the report released by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology at the meeting showed that the 5G industry penetration rate exceeded 76%, forming a good situation of head-first, large and small 5G applications in the industry and enterprises to accelerate the proliferation.
In this race track, the development of the enabling industry is the final foothold of the development of “5G+ industrial Internet”. According to data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, there are currently more than 340 industrial Internet platforms with some influence, and the number of industrial equipment connections exceeds 96 million units.
At the same time, a series of key technologies such as industrial-grade 5G chips, modules, and gateways have achieved breakthroughs. China’s industrial Internet has entered a new stage of large-scale development, and “5G+ industrial Internet” has entered a deeper core business area, which has spawned more new formats and new models.
“The advantage of 5G is that the network can be wireless, which can be very good to deploy production equipment. One scenario is that if the production line often needs to be adjusted, such as for enterprises with high personalized customization requirements and particularly fast market changes, 5G has great advantages. Because it doesn’t need to rewire the network when it reorganizes the production line, this is kind of a requirement [for 5G applications].” Yu Xiaohui, president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said in an interview.
