If China takes the lead in building a 5G network, what impact will the US have?

The online version of the US "Connected" magazine recently wrote an analysis of the impact that China may be the first to build a 5G network.

The following is the main content of the article:

The technical standards for the next generation of mobile services have not yet been finalized, but China and the United States have begun to compete for the deployment of 5G networks.

At least the US government and US carriers say so. "The United States will not have a second chance to win the global 5G war." Meredith Attwell Baker, president and CEO of the wireless industry organization CTIA, warned in April that the organization’s report at the time said The United States lags behind China and South Korea in the preparation of the 5G network.

The report believes that if this cannot be changed, the US economy will suffer.

The report is consistent with the previously leaked National Security Council document, which recommended that the US government consider building a 5G network. The report believes that if China dominates the telecommunications network industry, it will achieve political, economic and military victories.

The Democratic Party is also worried about this issue. Jessica Rosenworcel, the only Democrat in the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC), wrote a column at TechCrunch earlier this year, calling for a 5G strategy to surpass China.

The first standard for 5G technology was released last year, but the remaining standards will not be available until later this month. Operators expect the United States to spread 5G nationwide by 2020.

If China takes the lead in building a 5G network, what impact will the US have?

The wireless industry promises that 5G can significantly increase the speed of network speeds and mobile devices, fill the gap between cable broadband and wireless broadband, and generate new technologies and applications that were previously unimaginable.

However, why is it so important for the United States to build a 5G network before China? The benefits of 5G are obvious, but today's US home broadband speed is not the fastest in the world, 4G speed and popularity is not the world's top, and often even behind Finland, Japan and South Korea.

In this case, why is there a slight backwardness in the 5G feast, which may lead to the economic advantage of the United States being eroded?

Accenture released a widely quoted report in 2016 that estimates that the construction and maintenance of a 5G network will create 3 million jobs in the US, adding $500 billion in GDP. But if China takes the lead in building a national 5G network, will these jobs be lost overseas?

Accenture managing director Sanjay Dhar, who is involved in the writing of the report, thinks this may not be the case. "Even if China wins in various 5G technologies, this will not be a zero-sum game," he said.

Telecommunications industry analyst Jeff Kagan said that competition between China and the United States has prompted the United States to develop 5G, but he believes that even if the United States ranks second or third in this field, it will not The US economy has too much long-term impact. "I think that which country gets the first is just a self-conscious struggle," he said.

On the one hand, the economies of the two countries are still interdependent. Even if China “wins”, American companies can still profit by selling technology to China.

Roger Entner, founder of Recon AnalyTIcs and co-author of the CTIA report, admits that if the US launches 5G a few months later than China, it may not be a big problem. Europe is launching 2G faster, while Japan is the first to launch 3G, but this has not prevented Apple and Google from leading the smartphone market.

However, Entner believes that if China is one or two years ahead of the US, it will undermine the competitiveness of the United States in the global technology market.

Chetan Sharma, a mobile industry consultant, said that the launch of the 3G network in 2002 in the United States made the iPhone and application market released in 2007, which in turn promoted a large investment in mobile computing. 4G technology was commercialized in the US in 2011, increasing the appeal of smartphones and mobile apps.

Applications such as Instagram, Uber, and Lyft have also given the United States an edge before competitors in other countries have grown bigger.

In the final analysis, what really determines the technology to win or lose is consumer decision-making and the private economy. The reason why the United States "beats" Europe and Japan is because Apple has developed a product that brings smartphones to the mainstream, because Google has developed a popular mobile operating system and is free to use, because Facebook has developed a way for people to keep watching. The platform of the mobile phone.

Some people worry that if China is the first to promote 5G technology, Chinese companies will gain first-mover advantage and develop the next generation of high-tech products and services.

Entner said that this is not very worrying in smaller countries such as South Korea, because Korean companies do not have enough markets to test and refine their ideas. But China's huge population of 1.4 billion still provides a large-scale ideal place for enterprises to export to other countries.

For example, WeChat is not only an instant messaging service, but also provides products such as mobile payment, online banking, and car services. Western countries have been trying to imitate the success of Tencent for many years.

Huawei has become the world's top provider of infrastructure equipment, but they also initially developed through the service of China's domestic market.

Gaining a leading edge in the 5G sector can also bring another advantage to the Chinese technology industry. 5G can not only speed up the network speed, but also increase the capacity, thus contributing to the development of the Internet of Things.

All connected cars and a variety of electronic devices can generate massive amounts of data, which can help China gain a leading edge in areas such as driverless cars and artificial intelligence.

“The massive data contributed by 5G is critical to training artificial intelligence algorithms,” said Paul Triolo, head of technology at Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. “So, leading in equipment and application development. The country will also have a huge economic advantage."

Provide wireless spectrum

Entner said that the probability that China is ahead of the US for more than a year does exist because the United States has not allocated enough wireless spectrum for the new network.

So far, the most developed 5G technology has focused on the "millimeter wave spectrum", which can achieve extremely fast speeds, but the transmission distance is very short. This requires operators to deploy a large number of small antennas to cover 5G networks throughout the United States.

Operators are pushing the US Federal Communications Commission to open more IF spectrum for 5G, allowing it to use large base stations as they are now. This can speed up the deployment of 5G.

Some people worry that if they can't provide enough IF spectrum to operators, the 5G network launched in 2020 will not cover the entire country.

The FCC plans to sell some of the IF spectrum to operators in November this year through auctions, and officially began offering another batch of spectrum last month.

But the longer this process takes, the longer it takes for US carriers to build a true 5G network. Entner said that after the US new spectrum has been identified for specific use, it usually takes several years to launch the first network.

In contrast, the Chinese government has opened up more IF spectrum for 5G. This is also an important reason why the CTIA report believes that China and South Korea are "leading" to the United States.

National security concerns

The leading concern for China in the 5G field has also penetrated into the national security field. Huawei's products are used by operators around the world. But the US government has always worried that Huawei will help the Chinese government monitor US citizens, businesses and politicians.

Huawei has almost been blocked by the United States. However, if the telecommunications equipment companies of the United States and its allies withdraw from the market, US operators may have no choice but to purchase Huawei products.

US buyers will certainly continue to circumvent Huawei's equipment and switch to US companies such as Cisco and Juniper or European companies such as Ericsson and Nokia. But this will not pose a big challenge to Huawei's position in the world.

Similar logic exists in the entire 5G technology. Even if the United States wins the 5G war, it still cannot stop China.

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