5G network construction requires continuous innovation.
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Just as mobile phones have evolved from feature phones to smartphones, and despite the ever-increasing power of smartphone functions yet the lack of a breakthrough in battery technology, smartphone manufacturers have increasingly turned their attention to innovating charging technologies. After all, no matter how powerful the features or how advanced the hardware of a smartphone may be, without sufficient power supply, it’s nothing more than a “brick.” The same holds true for 5G base stations.
As we all know, 5G boasts three core atomic capabilities: eMBB—enhanced Mobile Broadband; uRLLC—ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communication; and mMTC—massive Machine-Type Communication. These capabilities are designed to address three major application scenarios, paving the way for a fully connected world where everything is interconnected. However, despite its many strengths, 5G also follows the law of unity of opposites—“no one is perfect.” Like any technology, 5G has its own challenging drawbacks as well.
First, there’s the issue of exorbitant costs. It’s well known that operators are under tremendous cost pressure when building 5G networks. To put it simply: according to data previously collected by China Mobile, the cost of a single 5G base station is roughly 160,000 yuan. Moreover, based on publicly available projections that the number of 5G base stations will be twice that of 4G, achieving the same coverage as 4G would require approximately 10 million 5G base stations. Thus, the total investment required for procuring these 5G base stations would reach an astronomical figure—1.6 trillion yuan.
However, this figure represents only the cost of equipment procurement by telecom operators and does not include expenses such as electricity bills, maintenance fees, labor costs, site rental fees, and so forth once the network is built. Therefore, reducing network deployment costs through various innovative approaches has become a top priority for major operators. For instance, in terms of power supply and service transmission for base stations, the traditional approach involves operators using composite optical cables to tap into external grid power. Each year, the publicly announced projects for collecting optical cable data from base stations typically involve tens of millions of fiber-kilometers. How can these substantial expenditures be effectively reduced?
Second, there’s the issue of network deployment efficiency. Aside from the substantial costs involved in procuring fiber optic cables and hiring personnel for maintenance, the construction of base stations is often delayed due to excessively long lead times for introducing or upgrading external power supplies. For example, as we all know, one of 5G’s biggest selling points is its flexible deployment capability—thanks to its high bandwidth, low latency, and massive connectivity, it can connect any IoT device anytime, anywhere. However, 5G base stations themselves are actually quite difficult to deploy flexibly and on demand. After all, a mobile communication base station isn’t just the base station equipment itself; it’s an integrated structure comprising facilities such as equipment rooms, power lines, and tower masts. Among these components, power supply equipment plays a critical role. So, in scenarios like disaster relief operations, large-scale galas, or sporting events, how can we eliminate that “final cable”? Therefore, exploring ways to accelerate and enhance the speed and flexibility of network deployment in various environments is an urgent and critical issue that operators must address.
Continuous, base station, 5G, deployment, network, operator, cost, one, feature, procurement
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