Industry News

After five years of development, China's 5G is not only far ahead in the world, but also changing our production and lifestyle in many fields. At the same time, businesses such as live broadcast e-commerce, naked-eye 3D, remote control, and flexible production are on the rise, placing higher demands on network bandwidth and latency. As a 5G evolution technology, 5G-A is developing at the right time. 2024 is regarded by the industry as the first year of 5G-A commercialization.

As we all know, the first version of 5G-A3GPP (R18) will be frozen in the first half of this year, and the industry’s first batch of 5G-A full-scenario and full-series solutions have been released. Not only that, the three major operators have also used the high bandwidth, low latency, positioning accuracy and other characteristics of 5G-A technology to do a lot of technology and scenario exploration and innovation.

As the main force in technological innovation and network construction, China Telecom has joined hands with Huawei and other industry chain partners to create benchmark projects in the fields of 3CC (Three Carrier Aggregation) and RedCap in Shanghai, Hubei, Shaanxi, Guangdong, Fujian, Jiangsu and other places in the past year. .

So, what value will these innovations and achievements bring to the industry? In order to quickly promote 5G-A towards commercial use, what preparations need to be made in the industry chain? What other trends should we pay attention to in the future? Let’s take a look at the interpretation one by one.

At the beginning of 2024, 5G-A frequently spreads good news. It turns out that China Telecom has completed 3CC contiguous deployment in multiple provinces and cities.

3CC is a new term, I believe many people find it novel. In fact, 3CC (Component Carriers) refers to three-carrier aggregation, which is also one of the key features of 5G-A. 3CC can combine the operator's three frequency bands of 5G signals to transmit more data, just like merging three different lanes into a wider highway.

3CC is really an artifact to deal with the network bandwidth bottleneck caused by new services such as live broadcast and cloud games! It is understood that Shanghai Telecom, Guangdong Telecom, Shaanxi Telecom, Hubei Telecom and Fujian Telecom have become the first batch of people to eat crabs.

Shanghai is at the forefront of 5G development in the country, and it is even more pioneering in the 5G-A era. On January 25, Shanghai Telecom and Huawei completed the first F+T 3CC 100-site deployment in China. By using 3.5GHz+2.1GHz three-carrier aggregation technology, the measured downlink rate was nearly 4Gbps and the uplink rate was nearly 1Gbps. For Hengshan Road in Xuhui District The user experience in densely populated areas has been significantly improved.

The booming development of the live broadcast economy has put forward higher requirements for both the uplink and downlink experience of 5G networks. To this end, Guangdong Telecom chose the 5G-A network construction solution of 3.5GHz MM+2.1GHz8T8R 3CC. At present, Guangdong Telecom has deployed 1,000 3CC cells in Shenzhen. According to test results, after the 3CC network is deployed, the user experience can be improved by 254% and the capacity can be increased by 200%. Users can enjoy live broadcast, high-definition video, cloud games and other services.

Xi'an, which has a long history, is also a popular tourist city, and a good online experience has become an important guarantee for tourist satisfaction. Recently, Shaanxi Telecom and Huawei completed the first 3.5GHz+2.1GHz 3CC 100-site contiguous deployment in Shaanxi Province. Currently, 3CC sites are opened in scenic spots such as Datang Evernight City. After actual deployment, the number of users increased by 80% and the user experience improved by 110%. %, capacity increased by 140%, and 3CC networks will be deployed in key attractions, supermarkets, and sports venues in the future.

Wuhan Evergreen Garden Community has a permanent population of 70,000. It is a typical all-round high-density residential area, and it is very difficult to cover it deeply. Based on this, Hubei Telecom and Huawei completed the first large-scale deployment of 2.1G Hz 8T + 3.5GHz MM 3CC in the Evergreen Garden Community in Central China, increasing coverage by 30%, uplink and downlink user experience by 80%, and capacity by 100%. Facing the future, Hubei Telecom's 3CC5G-A network deployment will fully support new business user experiences such as high-definition live broadcast, XR, and naked-eye 3D.

It is worth noting that 3CC technology is not just an upgrade of network bandwidth. It also has the ability to guarantee directional services. This means that 3CC can intelligently schedule and allocate bandwidth resources according to business levels and service quality requirements to ensure key services. Get priority, continuous and stable communication guarantee in complex network environments.

From these benchmark cases of China Telecom, it can be predicted that there will be two important trends in the future: On the one hand, the deployment of 3CC will gradually expand from a hundred stations to a thousand stations. Under the leadership of these demonstration cities, the cities that support 3CC base stations will also more and more. On the other hand, this year, mainstream terminal manufacturers will successively launch terminal equipment such as 3CC mobile phones and CPE. The device connection capabilities will be more powerful, the user experience will be upgraded, and applications such as live broadcast, naked-eye 3D, XR, and cloud games will usher in a new wave of development.