202 1 year is the first year of 5TOB development. This year, with the support of huge government funds and the accumulation of resources of operators and manufacturers, various industries have supported a large number of 5G benchmarking applications, such as 5G factories, 5G docks and 5G mines.

The problem in 2022 is how to replicate these benchmark projects at low cost.

In other words, if the country no longer saves money, can 5G survive on its own? Operators and manufacturers can still do it from "focusing on ensuring a single project" to "generally supporting n projects".

The further promotion of 5TOB has aroused people's attention to the 5G private network. The construction of 5G public network has reached the initial goal. Will private network become a new growth point?

In fact, our country's policy on private networks is strict, and the spectrum resources are tightly controlled. For enterprises, there is basically no room for independent network construction. Moreover, the technical threshold of private network is too high, and the construction and maintenance costs are also high. Therefore, except for state-owned enterprises such as electric power, oil and railways, most enterprises have little motivation and willingness to build private networks.

From a technical point of view, the advantages of 5G mainly focus on delay and bandwidth, and there are not many scenes that are really needed. If you pay for the 5G private network, most enterprises will carefully weigh the pros and cons.

Personally, it is not enough to rely on financial support to develop private networks. It is still necessary to consider loosening the policy, technology and spectrum, so that enterprises have more choices. We are not building a private network for 5G, but for digital transformation. Instead of overemphasizing the role of 5G in private networks, it is better to pay more attention to the importance of integrated access of all-optical networks and cloud networks in the park, and use cloud services to drive users' demand for networks and stimulate the construction of private networks.

Aspect 2: Millimeter Wave Policy Trend

1 month, the Beijing Winter Olympics is about to open. As a reporter, the appearance and application of millimeter waves should be the most noteworthy thing in this Winter Olympics.

Millimeter wave is a controversial technology, and many people raise it to the political level. In fact, this is unnecessary. From the perspective of industrial chain, China is also an important participant and beneficiary of millimeter wave industrial chain. There is no need to exclude a technology.

Millimeter wave, as a mobile communication technology, is actually not as unbearable as everyone thinks. Speed and coverage are the two ends of the balance, and each has its own advantages in different scenarios. The technical advantages of millimeter wave are large capacity, wide bandwidth, low time delay and accurate positioning.

The 8K live broadcast and VR/AR live broadcast of the Winter Olympics are both opportunities for millimeter waves to show themselves. If millimeter wave performs well in the Winter Olympics, it will accelerate the test progress of millimeter wave in China and further affect the development policy of millimeter wave, including the division of commercial spectrum.

Aspect 3: 3: Commercialization of R16

In 2020, the 3GPR16 standard will be frozen, but the real technology will land in 2022. The chips and terminals of R 16 will be listed in batches in 2022. So this year, we need to pay attention to what impact R 16 will bring to the existing 5G network. Whether the performance index of R 16 will bring significant experience upgrade.

At the same time, look forward to the future, pay attention to the freezing of R 17 and the starting of R 18. 5G-Advanced came in the blink of an eye. What's new? We need to study them well. RedCap is also a technology worthy of attention. As a youth version of 5G, will it affect Internet of Things technologies such as NB-IoT?

At present, the development of communication technology is only 3GPP. The trend of 3GPP Rxx is the development direction of communication technology. Follow Rxx closely, and there is a high probability that there will be no mistakes. However, the unification of 3GPP stifled the innovation of communication technology and formed a patent monopoly of technology by giants. It is more and more difficult for emerging enterprises to "rebel", and the probability of the emergence of new communication technologies is getting lower and lower. This is a question worthy of our consideration.

Aspect 4: Price trend of chips and modules

202 1, lack of nuclear everywhere, this situation is likely to continue in 2022.

In this context, the price of communication pan-terminal chip has not dropped significantly as expected. Especially the price of 5G chips is still very expensive.

On the one hand, the digital transformation is accelerating and the application of Internet of Things is growing explosively. On the other hand, the price of chips and modules can't come down, which is a problem.

Among several chip manufacturers, Huawei is now settling for the second best because of sanctions, pursuing a stable supply of chips with lower technology (28nm). This process, although the 5G mobile phone terminal is not enough, can at least meet the requirements of base stations, data communication and optical communication main equipment.

Another domestic manufacturer, Ziguang Zhanrui, has started to export products after years of accumulation. Unlike Huawei, Zhanrui does not have its own terminal. In the long run, the domestic industrial chain should increase support and let more terminal enterprises use Zhanrui. Only when someone uses it will it become better and protect this unique seedling. Zhan Rui himself should be careful to be targeted, and time is still tight.

In 2022, the domestic shipments of chip modules will only increase, and Cat. 1 and NB-IoT have great growth potential. 2G and 3G will accelerate the withdrawal from the network, and the market share of the Internet of Things will be greatly shuffled. The cost determines the market structure after shuffling.

Also facing the cost problem are high-speed optical modules.

In terms of transmission backbone network, the unavoidable topic is 400 g. 400 g, in short, cost and price.

The expansion of backbone network has not stopped, and the number of data centers stimulated by cloud computing is growing faster and faster. These have a strong demand for high-speed optical modules. In 2026, the global optical module market is expected to reach $654.38+045 billion.

Correspondingly, the price of high-speed optical modules, like the price of 5G chips, is slowly declining. At that time, the prices of 1G and 10G optical modules dropped rapidly, and now they no longer exist.

The overall situation of the global economy determines the rise of resource prices and the rise of final product prices. Rising prices mean that the capital expenditure of operators remains high. The final cost will still be passed on to the users.

Only time will tell us who will benefit and who will lose in this round of market.

Aspect 5: Gigabit optical access and F5G

The development of domestic optical access infrastructure is very rapid. More than ten years, from 1M to 8M, 10M, 20M, 50M, 100M, 200M and 500M. Now many families have entered the Gigabit (1000M) era.

With the rapid popularization of Gigabit, operators have been committed to promoting the standardization of 50G-PON.

The user access speed brought by 50G-PON is 5Gbps. In fact, from the perspective of user demand, like 5G, apart from the increase in tariffs, people don't know what such a high network speed can bring us.

With such a high network speed, only VR/AR and future holographic video can be used. Judging from the current domestic people's aversion to the meta-universe, there is still a long way to go to experience the immersive digital world. The standard bandwidth of home network speed is estimated to be 200Mbps. If it is higher, the user experience is not much different.

In addition to home broadband access, the demand for enterprise commercial office optical fiber access should attract the full attention of operators.

The cost of commercial optical access is too high, the uplink rate is too low, and there is no external network IP. These are the pain points.

Under the background of enterprise going to the cloud, users' demand for solving these pain points gradually exceeds the demand for simple download rate. Can operators give up some benefits and bring more convenience and experience upgrade to users?

Aspect 6: Internet of Vehicles

202 1 Affected by the development of new energy vehicles, people pay great attention to vehicles.

Love me, love my dog, car networking, autonomous driving and driverless driving have also attracted the attention of the public and capital. Huawei and Xiaomi have successively entered this field, further stimulating the further escalation of attention.

In fact, from a technical point of view, the progress of car networking, especially car-road coordination, is not particularly significant.

The Internet of Vehicles needs a lot of investment, and it is unlikely to be built on a large scale when the technology is not fully mature. In most places, small-scale experiments in demonstration areas are still the main ones.

Now the industry is aware of this problem, so it begins to mention the "closed or semi-closed" environment of car networking.

To put it bluntly, it is the unmanned driving and vehicle-road coordination in the park. It may take some time for the city size and high-speed car networking.

I think this idea is right. It is safer to promote it in a closed or semi-closed way on a large scale. Personally, I feel that if we can build more fully enclosed driverless highways, I believe it will be more helpful for the verification and maturity of technology.

Aspect 7: Spectrum Policy

In 2022, the delayed radio and television 5G will officially welcome the release number. With the ability of radio and television, even if the number is released, it will not affect the existing market share. It is worth paying attention to whether China Mobile will further enhance the competitive advantage of China Telecom and China Unicom with the help of 700M.

700M radio and television mobile cooperation, the biggest beneficiary is mobile.

Telecom and China Unicom's demand for further enjoyment of the spectrum has never stopped. The two operators have been coveting 700 million m for a long time and have been striving for policy support.

From a macro perspective, the enjoyment of spectrum resources is beneficial to both telecommunications and China Unicom. The strength of China Mobile is stronger than that of China Unicom and China Telecom combined, and the number of base stations is also the largest. Further enjoyment will stimulate market competition and put pressure on operators with the largest market share.

In addition to 700M, the allocation of high frequency band (especially millimeter wave band) will be the focus of operators' competition. The spectrum enjoyment policy is most likely to affect the domestic market structure.

Aspect 8: Small base station

The construction of 5G macro station has reached a threshold. Starting from 2022, 5G will focus on building indoor base stations.

This means that the market opportunities for small base stations are gradually emerging.

Speaking of small base stations, how many markets can RAN open, and how many? At present, the development of global Open RAN base stations is neither good nor bad. There are still not many operators. Mainstream operators are basically waiting to see.

As the largest mobile communication market in the world, China's attitude towards Open RAN directly determines the fate of Open RAN. Personally, I feel that the conditions for using Open RAN on a large scale in the public mobile communication market are not mature, especially for domestic operators, it is too difficult to define the responsibility of operation and maintenance and energy consumption. It is estimated that it will be tried on a small scale, or on the private network, and then decide whether to use it in batches next.

It is reported that the centralized procurement of small base stations will be held in the first half of the year. I wonder who will benefit from this big cake.

Aspect 9: Safety

202 1 year, the global communication network is not peaceful.

In June, the State Grid failed; In June 5438+10, FACEBOOK suffered the most serious disconnection in history; 165438+ 10, a large-scale network failure of an operator in Gansu; Recently, a code link in Xi 'an has been down frequently ... all these remind us that the network is safe and stable, and we still face great threats and have a lot of work to do.

Technology has made rapid progress, but the network is not as indestructible as everyone thinks.

In 2022, the Olympic Games, the Twentieth National Congress and other important events will be ushered in, and the security and stability of the network is extremely important. The communication network has been emphasizing "native security", but it still feels a bit far away.

I hope there will be fewer accidents and no accidents in the network this year, and everyone will be safer and less responsible.

Aspect 10: new technology

The situation that the basic theory of communication technology cannot be broken will not change in 2022.

Before the arrival of 6G, the wireless air interface will not change much. Supersurface technology and terahertz technology will take several years to mature.

In the case of new technology, it is worth focusing on low-orbit and large-bandwidth satellite communication, and the integration of AI and traditional communication.

Low-orbit and large-bandwidth satellite communication has been very popular in recent years, and the leading one is Musk's star chain. We can't use satellite links, so we will definitely develop our own low-orbit satellite communication system.

At present, China Satcom and other national teams have made rapid progress in this respect, and their coverage has gradually expanded from civil aviation routes to the Belt and Road Initiative and major navigation routes.

Domestic private satellite enterprises have great resistance to development. Satellite is a thing that needs technology and capital too much, and ordinary enterprises can't afford it, so it is easy to die.

Satellites are an effective complement to terrestrial communication systems. It may not be obvious at ordinary times, but once something happens, its importance becomes apparent. It is worthwhile to develop satellite communication, form an effective combination of ground 5G, and finally promote the integration of air and space.

Let's talk about AI.

The integration of AI and traditional communication focuses on performance mining, intelligent operation and maintenance, and reducing energy consumption.

To tap the performance potential is actually to use AI to empower wireless algorithms, such as high-order modulation or large-scale MIMO beam tracking. This piece is still quite difficult.

Intelligent operation and maintenance. At present, the communication network is too complex, and the traditional manual maintenance method is unsustainable. Appropriate introduction of AI in specific scenarios will effectively reduce the workload and difficulty of network operation and maintenance.

We still have a long way to go from a fully intelligent autonomous network, but the intelligence of the scene has seen a lot of dawn.

Energy efficiency can directly bring economic benefits, which is also in line with the national strategy. I believe it will be the most important area for AI to land.

Finally, it is worth mentioning the computing power network.

This year, operators pay more and more attention to computing networks. In fact, computing network is an extension of cloud network convergence. The boundary between cloud and network is becoming more and more blurred, and the computing power and connecting power are finally merged.

As practitioners in the field of traditional communication, we should have our own cognition in the face of this general trend.

Always turning around the traditional network, it is a dead end in the end. While connectivity still has some right to speak, we should take the opportunity to penetrate into the field of computing power, look for new business opportunities in the direction including edge computing, and transform ourselves into a computing power algorithm engineer and enterprises into computing power enterprises.

The top management of operators still see clearly, try their best to get rid of the positioning of pipelines and actively seek to become digital infrastructure providers, solution providers and content providers. IDC and industry-oriented digital solutions that operators vigorously build are to become digital partners of enterprises in the toB field and avoid being overhead by equipment vendors.

Well, that's Xiao Zaojun's comments on the highlights of the communication industry 10 in 2022. Personal opinions and opinions are not necessarily accurate. Welcome to clap bricks!

To be honest, in 2022, the biggest worry is the epidemic. I hope the epidemic will end as soon as possible and the whole world will return to normal track. Our life has been stolen for two years, and we really don't want to be stolen for another year.

Right?