5G investment and return issues

How many base stations does 5G need? 6000000? 800w? still is?

As user traffic demands and network bands continue to rise, we can expect that 5G is an ultra-dense network that will be newly built with small base stations.

The issue of 5G investment and return has become the focus of the industry.

How much does 5G cost? How much income and profit can you bring? There are many predictions at present, but they all ignore a key issue - the flexible diversity and resource sharing of 5G networks.

In the 2G era, we built hundreds of thousands of GSM base stations to meet the demand for mobile phone calls. In the 4G era, we built millions of LTE base stations and only met the needs of mobile Internet access. That is to say, in the 2/3/4G era, we spent A hugely funded network, but only to meet a single business need - call or go online.

5G is for diversified services, and the network architecture will also undergo fundamental changes. The goal is to build a flexible and agile 5G network, behind which is the key technology - network slicing.

The so-called network slicing is to cut a physical network into multiple independent and logical slice sub-networks. These "slice networks" share physical infrastructure, respectively serving the Internet of Vehicles, smart factories, enhanced mobile broadband, and large-scale objects. Different types of services such as networking.

That being the case, we have to change the way we calculate when we consider network investment and returns.

For example, we spent XXXX billion to build a continuous coverage of 5G network. If this physical network is like 2/3/4G, there is only one “slice”. In terms of investment-return considerations, operators must be cautious.

If this 5G physical network can cut out two "slice networks", it is equivalent to XXXX billion built two networks, one when two, the operator's mouth reveals a smile.

What if you cut out 3, 4, 5...slice networks? The operator laughed. Hahahaha!

Let's take an example. Let's not consider the future use cases such as car networking, smart factories, telemedicine, etc., and look at the current network.

In fact, although the current 4G network only serves smart phones, in fact, the applications on smartphones are diverse. For example, we use smartphones to watch videos, upload and download pictures, play games, etc. These applications do not have QoS requirements for the network. Do the same.

Suppose a user uses a smart phone to play online games while listening to music while downloading files from the cloud. At this time, three different applications share wireless resources at the same time. Due to limited network resources, the user may encounter music intermittently. , the game slow response, file download turtle speed and other issues.

However, this poor user experience may not be caused by limited wireless resources, because the three applications have different network performance requirements: when listening to music online, we usually tolerate relatively long buffer time, but we cannot tolerate it. While listening to music, it is intermittent; online games require low latency and high stability transmission despite the small amount of data; higher channel capacity is required to download files, but the delay is not high.

That is to say, because the characteristics of the three applications are different, as long as the network can flexibly and efficiently call and allocate time-frequency resources, it is possible to cope with these three applications at the same time, and provide an enjoyable experience for the user.

However, the current 4G network is incapable of supporting different applications and scenarios, and the network QoS is limited, and it is almost a "one size fits all" approach to different applications. At the same time, in order to complete any "short board" in different applications, the network has to be expanded as a whole, resulting in excessive network investment.

The 5G network slicing technology based on network function virtualization can solve this problem and enable more flexible and efficient allocation of resources. A "slice network" is an abstract connection service, or a logical network, consisting of a set of software-specific functions tailored to the user. 5G physical network resources can be logically allocated to different "slice networks" to meet different types of applications and services in different categories.

On the one hand, these “slice networks” flexibly and efficiently utilize network physical resources. On the other hand, multiple “slice networks” share physical resources to maximize network value. The more 5G innovative applications in the future, the more slices, the greater the value of the network and the higher the return on investment.

In this way, when we are in the budget network CAPEX and OPEX, the traditional set of static calculations, how many base stations to build, how much electricity to consume, and how much traffic to generate will not be applicable. The cost model in the 5G era is more complex, and investments and returns must be calculated in units of “slice networks”. Of course, this complexity is worth it.

Let's take a "slice network" as an example.

A "slice network" can serve multiple applications with similar QoS requirements, so it can be defined by a set of KPI requirements, including capacity, reliability, latency, and so on. Then, design VNF (virtualized network function) according to KPI requirements. Next, based on the VNF and the size of the user application, it is estimated how many physical network resources need to be occupied, including spectrum/bandwidth, occupation time, power consumption, supporting facilities, labor, and the like.

As shown in the above figure, the amount of physical network resources occupied is the expenditure of this “slice network”, and the user size multiplied by the charge unit price is the income of this “slice network”, and the two are subtracted, and the profit comes out.

If you want to cut another "slice network", continue to count like this...

The times have changed. The real challenge of 5G is not how much it costs, but whether it can incubate more innovative applications. On the other hand, if there is no diversified application, one or two “slices of the network” will cost money.

Finally, the end of a quote from a carrier executive is:

We are pushing the next Internet, which has nothing to do with the Internet in the 1990s. It is bigger, but we need to jump out of the tradition and we need exponential innovation.