Will A Full-Blown 5G Era Arrive Quickly？

By Carrie Tsai,  Last Updated: January 09, 2019

As global telecom carriers race to embrace the fifth generation of mobile telecom services known as 5G, some experts urge patience for what’s seen as a pivotal development for a new industrial revolution.

Due to the increasing exchange cycle, domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers have to change the status quo of sales decline.

The conventional approach may be to differentiate product design and brand marketing, or technically continuous innovation, but there also been chaos such as "5G commercial mobile phones."

At present, there are already a number of mobile phone brands that have released or are about to release "the first batch of 5G commercial mobile phones." Before the 5G has arrived, mobile phone manufacturers have already "pre-arranged". However, upgrading existing telecom networks with 5G kits will cost Chinese carriers 1.2 trillion yuan ($174 billion), or 1.5 times their investment in the 4G network, said Wei Leping, a telecom expert at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Service providers may be unable to see any return from their investment for eight years, Wei said.

As of now, the 5G R15 version has been frozen in June this year, but this is not a 5G standard, and the 5G R16 version may not be released until the end of 2019. In the link of operators' 5G base stations, China Mobile and China Telecom will officially commercialize during the National Day next year. China Unicom may be postponed until 2020, not to mention the higher frequency band of 5G mobile phones, resulting in smaller base station coverage. The number will be 2-3 times that of 4G. Looking back at the full commercial time of 4G, the large-scale commercial use of 5G networks will take at least two or three years.

Then there is a point. The standards and infrastructure of 5G networks are still in a state of zero. Some mobile phone manufacturers have begun to release 5G commercial mobile phones with great fanfare. Are they going off at half cock?

Qualcomm may be the smartest manufacturer in the mobile phone industry chain. It not only allows mobile phone manufacturers to pay for patents, but also the oligarchs in the mobile processor field. So when the 5G R15 version standard is not frozen, Qualcomm has launched its own SOC+ Snapdragon. X50 5G modem solution. Since the Snapdragon X50 is still an external baseband and is not integrated into the mobile phone processor, mobile phone manufacturers need to re-board the motherboard, re-optimize the design of the RF and antenna circuits, and then complete the 5G networking test in the lab.

However, this kind of solution is far from commercial maturity. The external baseband will cause the power consumption to rise, which will affect the battery life. This is a compromise solution. After the network commercialization, the so-called "5G commercial mobile phone" can’t smoothly transition to the direct use of 5G network, and users have to change the mobile phone when they arrive.

And for companies that want to make themselves a long-term beneficiary of new technologies such as 5G, the right approach is much more important than the first-mover advantage. Launching 5G without being prepared, launching 5G without a strong follow-on investment plan is not a new starting point in the long run.