IDCNOVA Commentary:Buzzwords change,while 5G and Huawei are still there,reflecting the two largest economies in the world and their severe confrontation in the future.Then,why US targets and care about China so much in one certain field 5G?Complicated as it is,something could be revealed if you look into the disparity between USA and China when it comes to the full industry chain of 5G.
Spectrum:USA legging behind already
Spectrum frequency is the core resource for telecommunications,and it’s cheap in China owing to governmental distribution.While in the States,operators must prepare for billion of or even tens of billion of dollars to get spectrum frequency via auction,which is an additional burden for operators and will raise the cost for customers.
In addition,the quality of spectrum matters too.Both EU and China employ Sub-6 as the main spectrum frequency and China also include 700M spectrum into 5G basket,which could achieve mass coverage at low cost and deep coverage via Sub-6.
As for US,it employs millimeter wave(MMW),which calls high density network at a small coverage level,because that’s a preliminary stage for 5G development.Thus America is legging behind China in terms of distribution owing to cost issue.
Industry chain:China VS USA
It’s widely known that,the quantity of 5G patents from China nearly doubles the combination of that from USA and South Korea.According to IPLytics,by March 2019,the major global 5G patents filed by Chinese operators accounted for 34%,South Korea 25%,USA and Finland 14%respectively.
Besides,Chinese companies has deployment in all major rounds including system,chips,equipment,terminal and testing,and they have all achieved commercial level.What’s more important,only Huawei and ZTE could provide the complete end to end 5G solutions equipment in the world nowadays.
In terms of 5G terminal,Americans looked down upon such kind of low tech manufacturing,thus even it dominated the upstream part of systems and so on,but it lack 5G network equipment providers and basically depend on Nokia,Ericsson,Samsung,etc.And it’s totally different in China,companies like OPPO,Vivo,ZTE,Huawei,Xiaomi and others had officially issued and transferred their first 5G smart phones with the operators.Such distance is caused within tens of year by different focuses between USA and China and could not be made up shortly.
In terms of IT infrastructure,USA is far behind China too.According to Chinese MIIT,the total sum of 4G base stations of China is 3.72 million by the end of 2018,which is even more than the combination of all the other countries in the world,and the quantity of USA for 4G base station is less than 300,000,roughly 8.1%of China.The reasons to form up such disparity lies in the backup and supporting from governmental policies in China,while the American operators put benefits first and the coordination is tough task plus private owned land which accounting for 58%of the total land.
And the laws and regulations in different states of USA are different,the central government needs lots of efforts to coordinate and negotiate if it wants to deepen and promote 5G development across the country smoothly at a fast pace.Many small and medium operators in its rural areas depend on equipment from Huawei.While the“Cuncuntong”project,a rural revitalization project in China covering road,power grid,running water,telephone and cable network as well as internet had achieved synchronized upgrading,with an investment over 1 trillion within 20 years,could USA accomplish that within 20 years?
Related: IDC Commentary: 3 Big Things China Issuing 5G Licenses Takes
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