5G is coming, and then what?

        I believe that you have seen a lot of topic about 5G from the media, today I want to talk about what changes it will bring to our lives and how the future mobile network will evolve.

        5G Era is Starting Ninety-eight countries and 293 telecommunication companies are investing in 5G, including Taiwan. Although the United States launched Fixed Wireless Access in 2018, the general public has not really felt the benefits of 5G mobile Internet; in April 2019, three telecommunication companies in South Korea launched 5G mobile phone services at the same time, and there are more than 2 million users so far. Additionally, Samsung spares no effort to launch supporting applications on mobile phones, which invisibly boosts sales; 5G in China has been licensed and is expected to become the largest market due to large population. Other countries such as Australia, Switzerland and Finland, have also invested in 5G construction. So, what changes can 5G bring to life? For the general consumers, the most impressive is the super-large mobile broadband. Take Korea, the world's first 5G commercial network, as an example. Although LG is the third largest telecom company in Korea, it has the most stable coverage and the fastest market share on 5G, because they have developed AR/VR, even LINE content or cloud games from the entertainment services of individual users. Fans can even realize their dream of dating idols through AR / VR scenes. As for the progress of other Asian countries, Vietnam claims to be the first country to launch 5G in Southeast Asia. China allocated the spectrum in June 10th this year, and is expected to officially operate in 40 cities on October 1st. The Japanese telecom operator also acquired the spectrum in April 10th this year, and expects to officially launch the service before next year's Olympic Games in Tokyo; Hongkong plans to start the spectrum bidding on October 14th this year. If the process is smooth, it will be expected to be operated in the second quarter of next year. Singapore originally wanted to start after the 5G core technology become mature, but almost all countries have invested in the 5G construction. Based on the risk consideration, they intend to allocate the spectrum in the first half of next year. As to Vietnam and Thailand, they must first clear the channel to set up 5G because of the fixed satellites. So the spectrum for 5G is still uncertain, and it is expected that it will be difficult to launch 5G before 2021; Indonesia will not announce the 5G plan until the end of 2019.

         In contrast, the launch of 5G in Taiwan is ahead of schedule. Due to the small and saturated telecom market, our popularity is the number one in the world compared with the global 4G utilization rate of only 40%. It is a strong driving force for the transformation of digital life. However, there are two 5G spectrum, one is intermediate frequency 3.5G with 270MHz, the other is high frequency 28G with 2500MHz, the latter is used in the United States now, but it is not easy to popularize, so the main target of the industry is intermediate frequency. There is only upper limit and no low limit in NCC's bidding principle, in the case of more monks and less porridge, the bidding will soar. Fortunately, the Legislative Yuan recently pass the Telecommunications Regulator Amendment Act, 5G will be able to share frequency and network in the future, which is good news for all of you.

        How will the mobile network evolve when 5G comes?

         Many people are curious about whether 4G or 3G will be no longer used in the 5G era. In fact, 5G is not intended to replace 4G or 3G, and not all mobile phones support voice calls using Voice over LTE (VoLTE), some still have to rely on 3G to complete. However, with the rise of LINE and other services, the use of voice calls has decreased a lot, which shows that the mode of charge will also affect consumption habits and prompts the telecommunications industry to think about how to charge for better experience. For Far EasTone Telecommunication, in the future, it will partly reduce the frequency of 3G and integrate the base stations of 3G equipment, aiming at maintaining basic coverage. As for 4G, it continues to strengthen. With the rapid growth of network usage in Taiwan due to the low price of 4G, telecom operators must constantly strengthen bandwidth capacity to ensure network quality, which also affects revenue and network investment costs. Taking Far EasTone Telecommunication as an example, 20% of the annual budget is spent on expanding the network hardware, but even so, with the continuous updating of video and audio service providers such as YouTube's system, the amount of data transmission is increasing, the original expansion plan is no longer enough to use, and 5G NSA architecture is urgently needed to support it.

         Far EasTone Telecommunication currently has more than 14,000 4G base stations in Taiwan. Usually three 5G base stations are needed to cover one 4G base station. Even if the ratio can be updated to 1:1 through technology, at least 14,000 5G base stations are needed to cover Taiwan. Although it took only two or three years for 4G to complete the installation in Taiwan, the construction of coverage and capacity continued until this year. Therefore, we plan to use the existing complete 4G network to work with 5G in the initial stage to provide customers with the best network experience, and then to operate 5G SA when it becomes mature. We will first build 3.5GHz spectrum, then set up 28GHz spectrum, the latter can be used as the enterprise's private network, although some enterprises want to use private network and frequency, but in fact the private network does not necessarily need private frequency, for example, the telecommunications industry can provide network slicing for a specific enterprise to use; or provide enterprise's private base station, or even further add data core network in addition to the enterprise's private base station, of course, if you really want to put all the information inside the enterprise, you can also use SA, these are the options that future enterprise private network services can provide.

        How will 5G be charged? Although the charge of 5G is uncertain, you may first understand how the telecom companies charge that has already launched the service. According to the Boston Consulting Group survey, in the 4G era, SK Telecom in Korea charged about NT$879 for 1.5GB. In terms of the average amount of 5GB per capita in the world, 6GB for me and the average amount over 20GB per capita in Taiwan, 1.5GB is absolutely not enough, let alone the package costs NT $2607 without the restriction of the data, compared with 499 yuan in Taiwan, the price difference is almost five times. Even though BT Telecom is cheaper, charge of 50G is close to 1,100 yuan. To Far EasTone Telecommunication users, the average amount is more than 30GB, which shows that the charge of 4G in Taiwan is cheap and abundant. As for the charge of 5G in Korea, it is increased by more than 22% than that of 4G. Of course, the telecom operators have also increased many applications, such as 4K/8K video, electronic games, AR/VR and so on. 5G's massive connection also helps to strengthen Internet of things (IoT) applications, such as smart phones, smart watches, smart house appliances and so on. In addition, 5G ultra-low latency can also provide solutions to Internet of Vehicles, smart manufacturing, telemedicine, remote manipulation and so on, which can bring considerable energy to industrial upgrading. In addition, 5G can also accelerate the development of FinTech. With the increasing popularity of mobile payment, collecting and transmitting a lot of transaction verification information for real-time transaction judgment and fraud warning must rely on 5G with low latency, massive connection and high-speed transmission. All in all, 5G can provide more diversified and deeper help for digital life, especially with AI, Internet of things (IoT) and other technologies, it can help the industry create new capacity in the field of robotic arm control, telemedicine, smart grid, smart retailing and so on, and also greatly enhance the competitiveness of the country. Therefore, the point is not whether we should develop 5G, but how to make good use of resources and maximize the overall benefits.

        Working together to be conglomerate is the key to the success of 5G Far EasTone Telecommunication has been actively plotting 5G blueprints since 2016 and conducting related tests in the hope of establishing the best spectrum and network evolution strategy, and combining the application of Big Data+AI+IoT (Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, Internet of Things (IoT), providing the best application solutions for consumers and enterprises, such as: intelligent factory, intelligent family, intelligent building/residence, intelligent medical, Big Data of intelligent transportation, Internet of Vehicles and so on. Among them, Internet of Vehicles especially focuses on the connection of the fleet, providing drivers and pedestrians with more comprehensive protection. Stay tuned the first year of the commercialization of 5G in 2020!