在往期的集微访谈栏目中，爱集微有幸采访了TechInsights服务提供商组执行总监、通信市场资深分析师Phil Kendall。集微访谈就关于5G技术、5G应用、5G发展、卫星通信等一系列问题，收到了十分有启发的答复。
问：相对于 4G 的发展，您认为 5G 的发展路径有何不同？
答：我认为主要的区别是，有两个主要问题。第一个是5G推出市场的成熟度，正如你所说，在世界上的一些地方，对于许多用户来说4G网络是一个真正的变革。特别是用户从500Kbps的移动互联网体验转变为在4G网络初期的2Mbps、5Mbps到10Mbps的体验。
因此，这很明显是立竿见影的改善和进步，尤其是在智能手机的媒体消费方面。这些服务在4G网络下得到了显著提升。所以，你可以看到这种巨大的变化。而且正如你所指出的，当你观察市场时，5G现在以及过去几年进入的领域，4G网络的性能非常不错。数十亿的4G网络用户没有抱怨他们的移动体验质量，也没有强烈要求推出更好的移动网络技术。
考虑到我们在手机上使用的各种服务，如YouTube、Netflix、抖音，在4G网络下观看短视频是一种非常令人满意的体验。如果你在10年前使用3G网络进行观看，你会经常发现视频在缓冲转圈圈或者画面全是马赛克，总之观看体验并不好。因此，一般的4G用户并不一定会看着他们的手机然后想：我需要更好的网络，我需要升级。所以5G的挑战在于怎么向消费者解释5G的存在价值在哪里，即他们可以通过5G手机做些什么更好的事情。我认为这可能是5G面临的第一个问题：即一样在发展初期，5G面临着和4G不同的客观环境，我认为4G和5G第二个不同之处可能是中国。中国在5G方面一直处于领先地位，不仅在网络规模上，也在部署网络的先进程度上。
比如使用5G独立组网（SA），而不是使用大多数其他国家中占主流但更老旧的非独立组网（NSA）5G。中国在5G智能手机市场上的购买量也是相当可观的。这一点与4G推出时的情况相似，不同之处是在4G推出时，中国在网络部署方面可能落后于一些领先的西方市场三四年。因此，5G技术的推出产生了有趣的反转效果，在5G技术生命周期早期，我们已经有了面向大众的、低成本的真正可用设备。
这是我们在4G、3G、2G等移动技术领域从未见过的，历史上没有任何一种移动技术能像5G这样在网络推出18个月后迅速从市场大规模普及。
问：怎么看待中国和智能手机普及对5G做出的贡献？
答：我认为中国政府和运营商选择在5G方面走在前列是一个非常明智的决定。所有拥有地区或全球性影响力的政府都希望支持本地供应商和运营商，以获得更大的全球出口市场份额。
在支持本地产业和创新以及渴望站在新技术前沿方面，中国与美国、欧盟、韩国或日本并没有任何不同。无论是5G、人工智能还是元宇宙，所有这些新服务和技术都是一些地区和地方政府都在努力寻求领先的机会。我认为，中国的供应商和运营商在5G发展早期就已经打下了基础。3G时代中国在通信技术上发展得并不好，此前，中国的标准未能在海外得到广泛采用，这是一次错失的机遇。我认为他们从中吸取了教训。在4G时代，中国的网络还是稍微有些晚，一样的道理，因为中国很大程度上还处在追赶者的位置，导致自身的能力没法驱动强劲的出口市场。在5G时代，中国希望通过成为采用5G技术的先行者，来支持本地产业的发展，在一定程度上使中国的运营商成为全球5G的旗舰玩家。
在TechInsights，我们支持许多运营商制定新服务的策略。在4G时代，每个人都想知道韩国、日本和美国等领先市场采取了什么措施来推动 4G的普及。而在5G时代，我们收到的关于中国市场的问题比很多其他市场要多得多，这主要是因为中国的运营商在5G企业服务方面发展迅猛，已经远远超越了消费市场，这是在其他国家很少见的。
因此，回到您的问题，在中国，我们认为华为、中兴等大型供应商和运营商在5G-Advanced技术和创新方面处于领先地位，因此，我们预计他们将继续保持强劲的竞争力，并努力推动6G的发展。从地缘政治的角度来看，中国的移动产业处于一个强大的位置，并在积极推动行业的发展。因此，我们对未来中国的创新持乐观态度。
所以我可能会稍微质疑一下有关市场演变的概述。在我看来，5G技术的消费类电子设备，尤其是智能手机，在2022年最后一个季度的发展和普及速度远远超过了4G或3G时代。
因此，全球手机销量中超过一半的手机都是5G手机，而这仅仅是在技术发布4年之后实现的。许多国家可能再需要2到3年的时间才能进入5G阶段。因此，5G技术普及到手机销售和智能手机销售的速度非常快，比4G要快得多，它可能比4G在类似的发展阶段领先了12到18个月。我们预计它的增长速度可能会放缓，上升势头不会像4G那样持久。很大一部分原因是我们正在向更多的发展中国家推进，在那里4G仍处于早期的发展阶段。
正如我们之前所说的那样，有些消费者并不清楚为什么需要5G而不是4G。在许多在非洲、拉丁美洲或其他一些地区，使用4G手机的人数相对较少，在运营商积极地推动5G服务之前，需要先经历大规模升级到4G的循环。所以我们预计4G和5G在这几年会和当初3G向4G切换时那样共存一段时间。我们对全球采用5G的速度印象深刻。但在这里其实有个大问题是，人们购买5G智能手机是因为他们想要5G服务体验，还是仅仅是因为想买的智能手机恰好内置了5G通信能力，这样看来iPhone 14的销售量可能更多是因为它是最新款的iPhone，而不完全是因为它支持最新版本的5G。
所以，有些手机差不多是默认启用5G的。所以5G普及不能直接归功于运营商在5G的价值主张方面进行了出色的营销，更多的是因为最好的智能手机都内置了5G功能。正如我之前提到的，中国巨大的市场规模也将5G带入了大众市场。所以确实挺难区分5G的驱动因素到底只是单纯由于智能手机的升级周期还是全新而美妙的5G服务体验。我认为，在世界上的大多数地方，我可能会选择前者，即5G的成功更多是偶然因素而非出于运营商的精心策划。
问：为什么业界对 5G 的愿景与当前用例存在差异？
答：迄今为止，放眼全球，5G主要提供了增强的移动宽带体验。可以说，它只是相对4G来说的实现了更快速、稍微降低延迟的改进。正如之前所说的，如果我们只是在手机上使用TikTok、Youtube或移动购物，我们并不需要每秒300Mbps的下载速度。因此，4G已经完全够用了。我们为用户提供了更好的服务体验，即使在许多情况下用户并不一定需要它。目前我们正处于5G的这个阶段，可能听着是有点没劲。5G可以提供奇妙的移动宽带体验，但并没有为消费者或运营商本身创造出大量价值。所有我们讨论的技术，都会有一个原始技术愿景和路线图，设想一个技术将有哪些功用：无论是3G、4G还是5G都这样。然后会经历一些标准的发布阶段。
每个新技术标准的最初版本都无法完全实现其全部技术愿景。因此，2010年代的4G并不是我们现在所见到2020年代的4G，例如窄带物联网（NB-IoT）这样作为4G物联网解决方案的功能需要经过多年的发展才随着标准的完善在全球许多市场上应用。同样的情况也出现在5G上，现在我们的网络处于R15或16的阶段，而当我们到达R18阶段时，标准会在明年冻结，也就是5G-Advanced或者有人将其称为5.5G，它具有更多功能，如增强上行性能、关于减少低功耗设备的功耗IoT的特性：比如无源或低功耗IoT设备，以及在增强现实和扩展现实服务等方面提供更好的支持。
所以在未来几年，5G将会有许多新功能，这些功能将使5G更接近最初的技术愿景，例如自动驾驶汽车、医院中的远程手术。这些用例可以很好地展示技术的能力，但是它们不会在发展周期的早期成为现实，它们更像是技术的终点和目标，而不是起点。
就服务而言，我们看到的创新可能有点令人失望。但是全球有许多国家和运营商做得很好。比如我已经多次提到的中国，虽然中国并不是唯一一个在企业5G服务方面表现良好的国家，但是中国的5G私有网络市场正在以其他许多国家无法比拟的规模蓬勃发展。智能制造、5G医院、矿业作业、港口和交通枢纽等领域都出现了一些非常令人振奋的应用案例。而这些应用场景现在就已经落地了，我们不需要等到未来两三年的5.5G普及以后才能够看到这些。所有技术都需要时间来完善，要经历五到六个版本后，我们才会升级到6G。因此，作为一项技术，5G仍然有很大的潜力。
我认为在未来几年，运营商将更加专注于确定真正需要5G的实际用例，这在企业市场中比较清晰，但在消费市场中仍然有些不清晰。我认为到目前为止最成功的消费者5G应用程序可能是固定无线接入。因此，5G作为家庭宽带技术，在某些情况下可以表现出优异的性能，甚至超越DSL和铜线宽带，在某些情况下可以与光纤宽带服务相媲美。全球一些市场的新兴需求为运营商提供了新的收入机会，并且是他们在4G时期无法实现的。虽然5G在一些孤立的领域有良好的发展，但5G在全面应用方面，现在正处于初期和成熟期之间的微妙分界点。
我不是芯片这方面的专家，但我有很多同事，他们更专注于这方面。将5G嵌入到各种设备中，这是一个巨大的机遇。然而在平板电脑和笔记本电脑中应用这项技术却具有挑战性。以为通常情况下，这些设备默已经有WiFi作为默认的无线连接方式了。尽管我们从未见过在笔记本电脑上大范围普及4G射频的情况，我们认为在这些设备上普及像5G蜂窝数据任重而道远。支持5G的笔记本相对于WiFi而言并没有让所有人一夜之间非用5G不可的新功能。
同样，这类似于4G转5G智能手机的问题。虽然5G是一个很棒的技术，但是解决消费者或商业用户在大众市场所面临的问题并不必须要5G，因为有许多其他的网络连接选项可供选择。其中Wi-Fi是最明显的连接选项之一，而另一种方法是将您的设备连接到5G智能手机上来实现网络连接。因此，从性价比角度来看就变成了消费者是愿意花更多的钱购买一款配备5G的笔记本电脑并支付额外的5G数据计划的费用呢，还是不用多花钱，选择一个便宜的笔记本电脑，通过连接WiFi热点来实现连接呢。这个选择不好答。当然，肯定存在利基市场和细分市场需要这种类型的网络连接选项，但其上次行规模并不像智能手机市场那样高，所以它肯定是一个更具挑战性的服务机会。
问：5G对内容提供商展现了什么价值？（视频是5G第一个火起来的用例么？）网络视频会成为 5G 时代第一个火起来的应用场景吗？
答：我认为这个观点很大程度上是基于以下的想法产生的，即如果您建造了一个高性能的移动宽带网络，那么内容提供商将会针对这些网络优化自己的服务，从而提供更好的用户体验，因为更好的体验意味着更多的人会观看他们的内容，并且观看时间也会更长。
因此，对于YouTube来说，如果我能根据设备的网络连接选项提供最佳质量的视频，那么就会获得实在的优势。有许多研究表明，视频的质量越高，人们观看内容的时间就会越长。因此，4G提供了这种级别的体验，真正增强了内容对消费者的吸引力。而这正是5G所面临的挑战，即如何利用5G高带宽实现差异化的服务，例如超高清视频和360°视频——就是那种用户可以改变自己正在观看视角的视频。当然，这个问题还存在一些争议。毕竟对于也就6英寸的智能手机屏幕上，用户能否感知到全高清（FHD）和超高清（UHD）之间的区别吗，技术上讲你可能分得出区别，但问题是这对于增强观看体验是必要的么？
另一个5G早期在消费者市场中的用例是云游戏，让我们不用下载一个1GB大小的游戏文件就能在手机上畅玩高质量的视频游戏。
通过云游戏，你只要选择自己想玩的游戏，然后点击“开始”按钮，等个几秒钟就可以开始游戏了。因此对于移动游戏领域中的不同玩家来说，这是一个强有力的市场。不过，值得商榷的是，作为消费者，我是否特别关心游戏是如何传输到我的手机上的呢？我真的需要点击开始按钮就能立即开玩吗？如果我要玩一个新游戏，需要花费5分钟的时间下载才能开玩。这可能是有些麻烦，但从我的个人角度来看，这也没有那么重要。因此，云游戏是一个具有挑战性的使用案例，虽然相对一些早期的5G消费者服务来说这已经有所进化了，但这点进步不足以真正推动5G的应用。可能虚拟现实和扩展现实更像是5G的杀手锏，它需要更大的带宽，而且在4G网络上做到良好的质量水平可能稍微有些困难。
但是，我们又回到了一开始的问题，那就是我们需要等待内容产业跟上。韩国的运营商这部分做的工作最多，试图通过虚拟现实和增强现实内容来哺育市场。因为主要的影视制片公司和游戏开发者在这方面稍微慢了一些。
所以，随着越来越多的人使用5G智能手机，当内容提供商看到用户能够稳定地获得200Mbps到300Mbps的下载速度和良好的上行通道时，他们会开始制作能利用到5G网络的内容。值得一提的是，移动视频的需求并不是由4G创造的。不是在4G网络启动的那一天，一夜之间就变出了大量的高质量视频内容，同样，这过程是缓慢而稳定的。一旦有了足够多的设备和网络体验，内容产业就会开发相应的内容来利用它。因此，我认为我们希望行业能够到达那个临界点，即如果我是一位内容开发者，我针对5G网络体验所开发的内容是有利可图的时间点。
问：5G 时代应该期待哪些创新？5G 是否需要新形式的设备?5G能否成功是否取决于用户设备的创新？
答：我同意。我认为，为了使这些技术成功，整个生态系统都需要进行创新。第一款iPhone甚至还没用上3G技术，而是2.5G和EDGE，第一代iPhone在第一批3G网络上线5到6年后才发布。尽管苹果选择了2G作为第一代iPhone的技术选择，但手机本身的进步仍然非常显著：比如巨大的触摸屏，对于大大提高移动内容的可访问性，并为移动网络增加价值来说是必要的演进。
因此，我们还需要让内容提供商一起参与并开发具有吸引力的内容或内容形式来推动5G的发展。因此，在看待5G时，可能不是把智能手机换个新型号就能推广出新价值来的，并让我们能够说，“是的，这是5G时代，我们能做的事情和4G时代多么的不同”。我认为手机领域有一些创新的尝试，比如现在的折叠屏手机。但我没感受到它们在使用体验角度上改变了潮流。我在折叠屏手机上能干的和在直板手机上能做的也没啥不同。因此，也许我们需要在智能眼镜领域寻求创新，例如像虚幻这样的公司，正在试图降低成本，使XR设备更实惠地面向消费者。
我们与许多运营商交谈时，发现他们认为5G中的设备创新发展方向不仅仅在智能手机领域，可能更多地涉及传感器和网络服务，来支持智能家居、智能工厂等领域。这可能围绕一些小型消费电子设备展开，比如在低功耗设备实现各种5G技术。因此，如果有人能够想出如何在这些类型的产品中放入低成本、低功耗的5G射频能力，那么智能手表空间甚至是耳机市场可能会迎来发展机遇。
当然，这并不意味着智能手机要被淘汰了，但我觉得没必要认为智能手机是定义5G使用体验或者能体现出相对4G关键优势的设备，其实很可能是其他形式的设备。想要最大化挖掘5G的价值，我们不能把视野局限在智能手机上。
问：AR 或 XR增强现实是否是未来?
答：我认为增强现实、虚拟现实和扩展现实市场确实有真正的潜力。它们的确需要一种稳定且良好网络，这可以通过5G网络来实现。你提到的延迟问题非常重要。一旦VR延迟超过某个水平，就会产生晕动症，因为延迟已经超出了人类大脑能够接受的范围。例如，当你转动头部时，视频画面可能会滞后100毫秒左右，这会导致晕动症等不适体验。
因此，实现低延迟的网络性能对于VR和AR来说是必要的。如果我们讨论的是消费者市场，并且认为5G家庭宽带可能不是最令人兴奋的新用例，那么VR和AR肯定具有巨大的潜力，AR的潜力可能更大。它更像的是在某些情境下像是给你眼镜添加了智能功能，而不是像VR一样在使用时完全看不到外面，这并不是移动应用场景，而是需要坐着或者在室内环境中使用，需要接上线缆或者使用良好的Wi-Fi网络。
因此，在VR的使用场景下，5G的地位就比较尴尬了。与之相反，AR不仅在消费市场适用范围很广泛，在企业市场的使用范围也是如此：比如仓储和物流领域，以及整个技能互联网市场也是如此。如果您是一个解决方案的专家，而我是一个刚入行的员工，我可以戴上AR眼镜去现场查看问题。您可以看到我所看到的，并向我提供建议和解决问题的方法。因此，作为专家，您可以节省时间，我们可以在两种不同行业的员工中普及技能和经验。因此，我这是5G在短期内能够增强用户体验的应用中更有趣的一些领域。
问：不同市场对无线电频谱资源分配的不同是否会加剧5G解决信道不足问题的难度？
答：我认为频谱分散的风险不会成为采用5G技术的主要障碍。实际上，我们和大多数运营商交流时发现，他们都热衷于在尽可能长的周期内，尽可能地利用自己拥有的所有频段来部署5G。目前，智能手机已经可以支持全球范围内的许多频段，以应对市场需求，而在若干年前则需要很多SKU针对不同市场。
从频率或技术角度来看，比如我需要一型手机适用于韩国、一型适用于日本、一型适用于美国、欧洲、以及可能是非洲和中国等地区。因此，可能会出现同一款手机有10个不同的SKU，只是因为要适配不同的技术需求，这种情况现在减少了很多，实际上，现在手机市场上最多只有两三个SKU，而许多智能手机还可以支持20多个5G频段。因此，如果我是西班牙的运营商，虽然使用的频段可能与其他运营商不同，但智能手机仍有可能会支持我特有的频段。
我认为我们看到了在不同地区中频谱资源上策略上的不同，当你提到的Sub-6GHz时，显然6GHz频段是一个关键的频段，但监管机构对此存在不同的意见，是继续压着不授权，还是授权给5G移动宽带服务？总的来说，运营商需要尽可能多的频谱资源。但在许多情况下，运营商可能夸大了所需频谱的数量，但我们没必要认为频谱可用性是5G采用的重要障碍，目前的频谱资源还是相对充裕的。正如你所说，一些国家和地区在决定是否将频谱资源从军用或其他用途转移到移动服务时进展较慢。
总的来说，对我而言，频谱资源不是5G生态系统发展的障碍。我认为5G的成功更多地依赖于创建内容和服务的应用开发商和内容提供商，而不是频谱资源对连接速度或网络性能的影响。
因此，它更像是一种服务，5G的挑战更多地是一个服务问题，而不是网络部署问题。
问：逆全球化是否会加剧6G方案标准制定的分裂?
答：我们显然还处于6G标准化工作的早期。当然，的确有可能会出现地区分裂的情况。中国和美国可能会有各自的独立经济出现，并导致一定程度的分裂。虽然我不认为这是最可能发生的结果，不过我也不能排除这种情况的可能性，毕竟在未来几年地缘政治的局势中，谁也说不准可能会发生什么。
但总的来说，关于在全球5G最新标准开发方面，我们所面临的（逆全球化）挑战上。华为和其他中国供应商其实没有被排除在标准化工作之外。很显然，尽管美国公司和那些需要遵守美国规定的公司不能再向某些中国公司销售5G技术，但这并不能阻止他们研发和标准制定的进行。
对此我还是比较乐观的，当然我们仍然会在全球范围内看到一些可能影响6G标准发展的干扰。无论是中国或其他国家市场的参与者，谁能够获得所有组成技术的拼图，谁就能成为新技术领域的领导者，这可能是最大的未知数。但总的来说，我们还是比较乐观的。当6G标准在2027年、2028年时逐步形成时，我们不会看到两个大相径庭的6G标准——所以现在我们还有很多时间。我们仍然可以看到，全球所有这些供应商在标准化工作组中非常活跃，他们还在谈判桌上，但对于接下来能否在未来20年、30年内接触到最新的芯片技术这个问题，我的同事可能比我回答得更好。
问：5G有助于降低运营成本还是增加了营运成本？
答：是的，这个问题很好。从理论上讲，5G比4G更高效，5G网络可承载更多的流量，但成本上的差异并不大。其实关键在于如何部署网络。理论上讲，如果我有一个网络，在一个地方以典型的100Gbps的速度传输流量，那么使用5G传输达到100Gbps速度可能比使用4G或3G更划算。如果我们按传输每个比特花多少成本来计算，从理论上讲5G的确比4G便宜。但挑战在于我们不可能突然升级到100Gbps速度的网络，我不可能一夜之间就把网络制式从4G切换到5G，这是一个长期演变的过程，因此运营商面临的问题是，除了正在运行的其他旧网络外，运行5G给他们带来了额外成本。对于许多用户来说，升级到5G也意味着更新无线网络。因此，你可能会需要一个新的4G和5G混合基站取代旧的4G基站，新基站功率更低、运行效率显著更高，不仅在基站层面，单位用户或单位流量下效率也更高。
所以事实上，如果我们按照上面的角度对比，5G的成本就是比4G低。但问题是这只是理论上的，现实是如果你正在运营网络，你不能只看理论和数据，你必须根据眼前的问题随机应变。在过去几年中，随着能源成本的上升，运营商们一直在尽力加快关闭旧的传统网络。运营商面临的最大挑战是传统网络非常不利于控制成本和节约能源。虽然它们可能承载的流量不多，但仍然需要耗费大量的能源来维持其运行。
所以在无线网络中，3G网络是当之无愧的电老虎，在有线网络这边铜网线也是如此。如果我是一家运营商，只要淘汰所有本地铜线网络，在所有地方都换成纯光纤网络，就能大幅降低能源成本。但现实情况是，这需要一点点进行。因此，如果我是一家移动运营商，观察到网络流量每年增长20%、30%、40%，从经济角度上讲，我会尽可能快地将20%、30%、40%的增量转移到效率最佳、最高效的5G网络上去。
从这个角度来看，选择5G网络有极大的吸引力，因为5G可以帮助运营商优化成本。但是，你必须努力把传统流量转移到更高效的网络上去，否则5G网络只是额外的一个网络，碰巧跟其他网络一起运行而已。
问：日益增长的数据需求是否会抵消5G技术带来的容量和成本效率福利?
答：如果运营商正在部署新的频段，而现在大多数网络都在这么做，当进入C波段、4.9 GHz等更高波段时，通常会有更多的频谱分配。因此，频谱效率加上更多频谱意味着，运营商可以在5G网络上获得比4G网络高10倍以上的容量，这两者不是直接比较，因为事实是在某些情况下，4G网络仅在40MHz的频谱上运行，但5G则可以使用高达200MHz的频谱。
因此，从频谱角度来看，5G已经赢了。显然，5G网络具有相当大的额外容量来支持高水平的使用。只要关注一下固定无线网络市场，就能发现美国的Horizon和T-Mobile正在积极推广5G家庭宽带，其用户每月消耗大约300到400GB的流量，而不是智能手机上每月20到30GB。这里的使用量增加了15到20倍。如果这些网络不够高效，那么这些运营商就不会使用5G来提供固定无线接入服务。
所以，（5G在）经济上允许带宽显著提升。因此，运营商面临的挑战不在于如果推出了更快的网络用户流量用得更多了怎么办？
挑战可能恰恰相反。即需要给用户一个理由来使用更多的数据，因为网络容量突然提高到了原先的10倍。但人们在手机上也就用了两倍的流量，运营商需要想办法让人们使用5到10倍的数据量。因此，需要引入云游戏和其他服务以及超高清内容来增加带宽消耗。
问：卫星通信是否能够成为移动互联网的下一个破局点?
答：我想，这取决于我们如何定义突破，如果指的是把网络带到以前未联网的地区上，那么当然，这是一个彻底的变革。如果我们能够把之前无法接入任何技术的社区连上网络，那影响将是巨大的。我的意思是，尽管我们今天看到了一些服务，如直拨电话服务，对于移动互联网来说并不是一个巨大的突破。其中一些卫星通讯正在努力实现双向短信通信。所以目前主要是提供短信服务，接下来可能会有一些语音级别的服务。
移动互联网相对而言优先级并不高，我认为还有几个机会领域非常重要。用卫星覆盖沙漠等偏远地区的移动互联网是一种很好的方式，因为问题在于有谁在沙漠里有通信需求。如果在沙漠地区有巨大的连接需求，运营商会想方设法覆盖这些区域。在考虑常规的蜂窝技术和扩展范围的基站时，我们可以看到一些基站可以覆盖超过100公里。因此，利用蜂窝网络有效地覆盖非常偏远地区的技术是存在的。在许多国家，移动网络已经覆盖了99％以上的人口，只要人多的地方都已经覆盖了。
超出这些覆盖范围的会使用物联网技术，比如用于农业、林业和渔业以及偏远地区的采矿等用例，这些都需要某种形式的连接。这种连接方式可能基于专用的私有移动网络，但在这些应用场景中，卫星绝对有其作用。大多数运营商认为，卫星连接解决了最后5％的土地面积和最后半个百分点潜在客户的问题，这就是卫星通信技术的价值所在。我想你在研究的时候，会找到像Starlink这样高性能的互联网平台的解决方案。目前它在美国市场上做得很好，尤其是在宽带市场环境相当分散的地区，例如一个偏远社区可能只有10Mbps的DSL选项，这是他们所在城镇唯一可用的宽带技术。
所以，突然能够以200或250Mbps的速度获得Starlink是一个真正的突破。所以卫星通信当然有机会，只是相对于升级覆盖范围的5G或其他解决方案来说，卫星通信在经济上略有争议。卫星通讯绝对是让每个人都上网并补全全球联网缺口解决方案的一部分，我只是不敢确定地说它是一个关键的贡献者。卫星通讯是能解决少数使用案例中的问题。如果您恰好处于非常少的使用案例中，那么它绝对是一个突破性的改变游戏规则的技术，但对于普通电信运营商来说，这只是一个不错的添头，可用于解决小部分潜在客户群的问题。
问：在未来，卫星通信是否会成为6G的一部分?
答：当然，非地面网络明显是5G标准未来版本的一个重要特征。因此，5G版本中，包括R18版本和5G-Advanced版本以及R17版本，不少支持者希望将非地面网络作为其功能集的一部分。我们与许多5G运营商交流时发现，他们对将卫星连接引入5G领域充满期待。至于引入5G是否会导致卫星通信标准的分裂，我不太确定，因为它有点超出我的专业领域。不过目前已有不少卫星运营公司在物联网和远程连接等领域拥有不错的业务。他们会选择并入5G并符合5G的R17或R18标准吗？
我认为也许不会，但是可以肯定的是我们仍有大约三四年的时间为6G标准做好准备，并可能会看到更大规模的标准化工作。但我不会判断谁会胜出或失败，也很难预测卫星连接技术在6G或现在这个阶段会碎片化还是会统一，但可以确定的是，5G和6G标准主体对将卫星连接纳入它们的领域都非常感兴趣。
以下是采访原文（英文）：Q:Compared with the development of 4G, how do you think the development path of 5G is different?
A：I think you make very good points there. I think the main difference, there's two main issues really. One is the maturity of the market that 5G has launched into, as you say, in some parts of the world, 4G was a real step change for many users. They went from a 500 kilobit per second mobile internet experience to probably at the start of 4G, 2 to 5 to 10 megabits per second experience.
So there was a significant improvement we saw something of a step forward in terms of sort of media consumption on smartphones, in particular. So there were services that were really lit up by the 4G experience. So you had this sort of significant step change. And as you kind of point out, when you look at the market, 5G is entering what has entered over the last few years, the performance of 4G networks is pretty good. There are not billions of 4G users out there complaining about the quality of their mobile experience and desperate for something better.
So given the types of services we all use on our phones, Youtube, Netflix, TikTok, watching a short video on a smartphone over 4G is a perfectly satisfactory experience. If you were doing it on 3G so the 10 years ago, you would have a buffer wheel, very pixilated video, just not a great experience. So the average 4G user is not necessarily sort of looking at their phone and thinking, I need something better, I need, I need the next step forward. So 5G has challenges there in terms of explaining to consumers what the value proposition is, what can they do better with their phones? So I think that's probably the first issue. So this is completely different climate, but 5G entering, I would say the second the second factor of its difference between 4G and 5G is probably China. China has been very early with 5G both on the network side, on how advanced the networks that have been deployed are.
So the use of 5G standalone, rather than the oldest of non-standalone version of 5G but that sort of dominates in most of the rest of the world. And China has bought volume to the 5G smartphone market in a way that it did when it eventually launched 4G, but China was probably 3 or 4 years behind some of the leading the western markets in terms of deployment of 4G, so 5G has been fascinating inverse. It has been a technology launch where very early in the technology life cycle, we've had real sort of mass-market, low-cost devices being available to consumers.
And that's something we just haven't seen with 4G with 3G or 2G and no mobile technology before now has suddenly been catapulted into a sort of a high-volume market inside of the first 18 months of network launches.
Q：So as you have mentioned, that China has used to be like behind some developed countries in the population of the 3G and 4Gs. And therefore, at the beginning of the 4G promotion in China, the Chinese operator can deploy the proven and relativity measures metric solutions and avoid some detours. For example, the China choose the LTE instead of the v max for the 4G natural standard, but in the 5G areas China is at the forefront of the 5G population. So what do you think that China will face any challenge that they has not encountered before in the population of 5G or 5G advance or even 60 in the futures.
For example, the transition of the non-standalone to standalone of 5Gs.
A:I think it was a very conscious decision by Chinese government and the operators to be an early mover with 5G. All governments with a regional or sort of local globally, they want to champion their own, their own vendors, their own operators to get sort of a large global export market.
And China is no different to the US or the EU or South Korea or Japan in terms of both that desire to support sort of local industry and innovation and be at the forefront of new technologies and whether that is 5G or artificial intelligence or a metaverse, you see all of these new services and technologies, there's a, there's some efforts by sort of regions and local governments to try and identify a leadership opportunity for them. I think certainly the Chinese vendors and the Chinese operators have been set to the very early in the 5G cycle. 3G wasn't great for China. There was some that sort of local standards just never took off outside of China. It was kind of a missed opportunity there, I think, I think lessons were learned. The networks were slightly late with 4G so there was, again, no real ability to drive a strong sort of export market. They were very much followers think with 5G that desire to be very early, right at the forefront of technology, adoption as has helped to support to the local industry, to a certain extent make the Chinese operate is flagship score for 5G around the world.
At TechInsights, we support a lot of operators in terms of their strategies for new services. With 4G everybody wanted to know what was happening in South Korea and Japan and the US, sort of what are these leading markets doing to drive adoption. With 5G we probably get more questions about what is happening in China than we do about sort of many other markets. And mainly, I guess, largely because of the strong sort of 5G enterprise service development, the Chinese operators have pushed significantly further beyond the consumer market.Then we've seen in too many other parts of the world.
So I guess sort of back to your question about sort of what all this means for China. And certainly we see, we see sort of the big vendors of HUAWEI, ZTES and the operators very much at the forefront of 5G-advanced and some of the innovations there. So we expect to see them maintainers of a strong position there, and certainly trying to push the agenda on 6G. So I think from a geopolitical point of view, sort of the Chinese mobile industry is in a strong place and so pushing forward there. So we're sort of quite optimistic about the innovation for the coming out of China.
My next question is about the consumer electronic market, so because in 2019, we expected that the development of 5G will encourage the sales of the raise the sales of the smartphones of the 5Gs. But nowadays we found, I believe at that time, the Chinese mobile manufacturers such as the real means, they claim that future their future products are all the 5G products. But today's we know they are also release some using old standard like 4G smartphones. So, so what's the reason behind these things?
So I would probably slightly challenge where the phrasing about overview of market evolution. From my point of view,5G consumer electronics devices, which are overwhelmingly smartphones, have developed and propagated sort of significantly faster than we saw with 4G or 3G in the last quarter of 2022.
So globally, we tipped over to more than half of all phone sales were 5G and that's sort of 4 years after technology launch. Many countries are probably more taking 2 to 3 years into their 5G journey. So the rate of, the rate of 5Gs penetration into phone sales and smartphone sales has been significant. It has been faster than 4G it's probably running 12 to 18 months ahead of where 4G was into it at its similar stage of evolution. We expect it's probably gonna drop off a bit. It's probably, well, it's not gonna carry on the meteoric rise as 4G had. A lot of that comes down to as we push into more developing economies, 4G is still at quite an early stage of evolution there.
So as we spoke earlier, many consumers don't really know why they would need 5G over 4G, if I'm in Africa or Latin America or some other parts of the world. And a relatively a modest number of people have 4G phones, there's still a large sort of, a large upgrade cycle of 4G that still needs to happen. The force of the operators release of aggressively pushed body services there, so we expect 4G and 5G will coexist in a way that perhaps a regime 4G have kind of struggled to in recent years. So we are, yeah, I think, we've been impressed by how rapidly 5G adoption has progressed globally. The big question mark, you would then have is, are people buying 5G smartphones because they want to 5G service experience or just because that really cool smartphone they want happens to have a 5G radio in it, think so certainly sales of Iphone 14 or arguably more about the fact that it's the latest Iphone rather than the fact that it's got a, it's got some of the latest version of 5G on.
So some of the adoption is almost by default. It's not down to great marketing by the operators about the value proposition of 5G, it's more down to the fact that the best smartphones have 5G on. And as I mentioned with the volume that comes in China, that's brought 5G down into these mass market volume markets as well. So it's certainly little bit of a challenge to identify is the driver simple smartphone upgrade cycles, or is it sort of wonderful new 5G service experiences?
And I think in most parts of the world, I'd probably go for the former and say 5G succeeding more by mistake than by sort of careful planning on the operated side.
Q:Why does the industry's vision for 5G differ from actual 5G use cases now?
A:Yeah, absolutely. When you look globally up till now, 5G has mainly delivered on this enhanced mobile broadband experience. It is arguably just a faster, slightly lower latency improvement on 4G and as we said, if we're just doing TikTok or Youtube or mobile shopping on our phones, we don't need 300 megabit per seconds download. So 4G was perfectly good, so we're kind of, we've given users a better service experience in many scenarios where they don't necessarily need it. Yeah. This the phase of 5G we're in a moment is probably a little underwhelming. It's delivered a fantastic, enhanced mobile broadband experience, but it hasn't created a huge amount of value for either folks, consumers, or all the operators themselves. I think sort of when we look at all technologies, you have the original technology vision and the roadmap for what a technology is going to deliver, whether it's the 3G,4G or 5G and then you have these phases of releases of the standards.
And the very first release never delivers on the full vision of the office technology standard. So 4G back in 2010 was not the 4G but we see now 4G in 2020. So features like Narrow Band IOT as a sort of a 4G IOT solution took many years to come to fruition in many markets around the world as the standards of all. And you see the same with 5G, we are, the networks today arrive a release 15 or 16, when we get to release 18, which is gonna be frozen next year. That is the next. So 5G-advanced or some call it to the 5.5G and that has more features in it in terms of better uplink performance, new IOT opportunities around sort of reduced capacities of low power devices, Passive and ambient IOT, greater support for sort of enhanced and extended reality services.
So there's a lot of features coming into 5G over the next couple of years, but that get you a little bit closer to that original vision, autonomous cars, remote surgery in hospitals. There's a nice kind of use cases that show the capabilities of a technology, but were never going to be use cases that emerge sort of very early in the cycle. They are sort of much more the endpoint, the goal of the technology, rather than the starting point.
So I think, from a service point of view, it has been a little disappointing in terms of the innovation that we've seen. As I said, there are countries and operators around the world doing good jobs. I'm not mentioned China a few times. They're not the only ones doing well with. So enterprise 5G services, but certainly sort of the 5G private network market in China is booming in a way we see in a more much smaller scale in many other parts of the world. So those smart manufacturing, 5G hospitals, in mining operations, in ports and transport hubs, there's some really sort of really, quite exciting use cases happening there. So there's a lot of and that is being delivered today. We don't need to wait for 5G in 2 or 3 years’time to be able to deliver on that. It's, yeah, all technologies are slow burners. They have these sort of five or six releases before we get to 6G so there's still a lot of potential in 5G as a technology.
I think over the next couple of years, operators will focus a little bit more on identifying the real use cases that you absolutely need 5G or four. And that's a little bit clearer in the business and enterprise market. It's still a little bit unclear in the consumer space. And I would probably argue that the one by far, the most successful consumer 5G application is probably been fix wireless access. So 5G as a home broadband salute technology, but in some scenarios can certainly outperform DSL and sort of copper broadband, can rival in some situations of the fiber broadband services. There are some markets around the world where that represents a real new revenue opportunity for operators and sort of something that they weren't able to really sort of catalyze on with 4G, so certainly very little sort of isolated pockets of good development of 5G, but in terms of your, your fully fledged verses of emerging phases of 5G, we were kind of on that very much on the cusp between the two of the moment.
I just remember that the intel used to be has they have to do some base friendships, used to be the iphone was using the entails his friendship. And they will sell that, sell that team to the one to the apples. So but they keep their base the basement business for the 5G laptop and cooperate with the media attack, but it is.
In few months ago, I believe the intel was gave up their baseband team for the 5G laptops. So I that means, sorry. the 5G board band. It's not as good as we expected.
So I think I, I'm not a chip set experts. I've got so many colleagues who focus on more, I think, generally embedding 5G into devices, whatever those happened to be, represents a significant opportunity there. When you look at Tablets and PCs, it is a, it is a challenging environment. Wi-Fi is very much for the default wireless connectivity option there. So we never saw massive adoption of embedded 4G radios on laptops, and we think that's very much a slow evolution. We're gonna seal 5G, that's not... 5G doesn't deliver a service experience compared to Wi-Fi where everybody suddenly needs 5G on their laptop.
Again, it's a bit like the 4G to 5G smartphone issue. It's a great technology. So 5G laptops, but it doesn't necessarily fix a mass market problem that consumers or business users have, there are many connectivity options out there. Wi-Fi being but by far the most obvious one or tethering your device to your 5G smartphone. So the value proposition of am I willing to pay more for a laptop that's got 5G, and then pay for a data plan to be able to use 5G on the laptop versus a cheaper laptop with no ongoing costs but I use over Wi-Fi, it's a challenging, it's a challenging proposition. There are certainly niches and market segments that need that type of, that type of sort of connectivity option, but it's not a, it's not the same sort of volume as a smartphone space, so certainly as a much more challenging service opportunity there.
Q:Will online video be the first use case of 5G?I heard this point of view in the speech in end of the night in shanghai 4 years ago, maybe is the four g was able to success because the emergence of the smartphones like iphones, stimulate our demand for multimedia content on the mobile internet. But at that time, the fun, the 3g network, especially the network speaker, could not carry the demand of multimedia contents to consumption, such as videos and image online videos and images. The four g network, it's just able to meet these needs. So it can be successful. So what do you think that point of views?
A:That's I think, I mean it's largely the case of this idea of sort of building it, and they will come, if you build out a high performance mobile broadband network, then the content providers will optimize their services around the performance on those networks, will deliver a better user experience because that means more eyeballs on your contents, longer viewing of your content.
So there's real upside to, if I'm YouTube delivering the best quality video that I can to a device based on what are the connectivity options for that device? What are the environments? So certainly you always... there's many studies out there showing that the higher the quality of the video, the longer people will stick with watching content. So certainly 4G delivered that level of experience, but really, really enhanced the appeal to consumers of the content. And that is the challenge for 5G, the differentiated services we see being pushed that could make use of 5G bandwidth are things like ultra-high definition video and sort of 360-degree videos. So your ability to change your viewing angle based on the video you're consuming. Again, it's slightly debatable on a 6-inch smartphone screen. Are you going to recognize the difference between HD and UHD? I mean, you probably would from a technical point of view, but in terms of this, does that necessarily enhance my experience significantly?
The other use case I pushed early on with 5G and the consumer market was cloud gaming. This ability to move away from the need to download a large, one gigabyte game file to be able to play out of a high-quality video game on my phone.
So moving back to a cloud gaming experience, and you find the game you want, you click play. And within a couple of seconds, you're playing that game. So a different, a different player in an existing kind of use case of gaming on mobiles is a strong market. Again, it's debatable whether do as a consumer, do I particularly care how the game is delivered to my phone? I want to press play and start playing? If when I start a new game, it takes me 5 minutes to download that game and get going. That's mildly inconvenient, but it's not, it's not a deal breaker from my personal point of view. So cloud gaming was a challenging, challenging use case fair. It's been hard. Some of the early consumer 5G services have been slightly differentiated, but not differentiated enough to really drive, drive adoption. It's probably VR and extended reality, but is the slight game changer for 5G something that needs a significant bandwidth and is slightly harder to do at a good quality level, on a 4G network.
But again, you're back to, we almost need to wait for the content industry to catch up there. You've got probably the South Korean operators have done the most in that space to try and seed the market with VR and AR content. Because the major movie studios or games developers have been slightly slower to do that.
So it's a case of ultimately, as more people get 5G smartphones, as we all, or as content providers see that users consistently get two hundred, three hundred megabits per second down and a good strong uplink channel. That's the point where they start to so develop. But content that really makes most of that 5G network. And it's probably worth saying, it's not like, it's not like mobile video. Mobile video wasn't created by 4G and it wasn't of a day 4G networks were switched on. Suddenly, we had this huge proliferation in the image of video content and the quality of video content. Again, that was a bit of a slow burner. Once you get a critical mass of devices and network experiences, the content industry kind of moves in line to exploit that. So I think we're hopefully getting to that tipping point where if I'm a content developer, there is value in me developing content, but is very much optimized for a 5G network experience.
Q:Does the success of 5G depend on the innovation of user equipment?
A:now, I do I degree. I absolutely, you need innovation right across the ecosystem for these technologies to succeed.
So the first iPhone wasn't even 3G, was a 2.5G, EDGE, was the technology on that. It launched over the 5 or 6 years after the first 3G networks went live, but Apple decided to go with 2G is their initial technology of choice. I mean, but it evolves significantly that bad evolution to a larger touch screen display was almost a necessary evolution to make mobile content that much more accessible and add value to the mobile networks.
So, and then you need the content providers to play along as well and develop the compelling content in the compelling forms to drive at auction. So when you look at 5G, it may not be, it may not be a new type of smartphone that drives new value propositions and makes us be able to say, yes, this is the 5G area. An era look how we do things differently now, so how we did in 4G, I mean I don't, there seems to be a lot of innovation and work around foldable phones at the moment. I don’t feel they necessarily move the conversation dramatically from a usage point of view, sort of what I do with a phone that folds in half is fundamentally not different to what I did with a phone that didn't fold in half. So perhaps we need to look for innovation in the, in the smart glasses space with guys like sort of Unreal trying to bring down the cost, make some most of affordable consumer of XR devices.
For many operators, we talked to, they see the device innovation in 5G coming in areas. Beyond the smartphone, it may be more about of sensors and network services to support smart home, smart factories, may be around sort of smaller consumed electronics devices that where various 5G technologies can run on various of low power of opportunities. So perhaps a smart watch space or even the market for ear buds gets a bit of a boost if someone can figure out how to put a low cost, low power, 5G radio into those types of products.
So I don't, it's not the end of the line for the smartphone, but I don't necessarily look at smartphone as being the device that changes how we use 5G and represents a step change from 4G, it probably is gonna be other types of products we need to get, we need to get over the smartphone if we want to generate a significant value out of 5G.
Q:in your point of view, which use case, do you think are promising? In my point of view, is you have just mentioned the AR or the mixed reality, because it's maybe because of the power consumption. They some computing is not in the local. They must send it in the house. So they need a big bandwidth, and they are very pacific on the legacies. Is that right? The latencies. So it may be very suitable for the 5g so what do you think? Which use case are promising?
A:I think certainly the AR and VR, extended reality market have real potential there. They do need the kind of consistently good network experience that you can get with it, with 5G network. Your point on latency is a very valid. Once latency goes above a certain level with VR and get the motion sickness, you get the delay in the response. So you move your head and the video tracks 100 million seconds behind you. You can get that real sort of motion sickness problem.
So a low latency, sort of network performances is certainly required for that. I do think if we're talking consumer market and saying that 5G home broadband is probably not the most exciting new use case, then certainly VR and AR have the great potential, and probably AR more than VR it is gonna be more smart glasses in certain scenarios rather than full blackout with a sort of VR headset on which is not a, that is not a mobile use case, that's I'm sitting down or I'm in an indoor environment where I'm either wired up or I have really good Wi-Fi available as well.
So the 5G ballot proposition there is a little more challenging, but AR is a broader use case in the consumer market, but also in the enterprise market as well in warehouse and logistics, in the ability that whole internet of skills market. If you'll be expert in a solution, I'm a more junior person, I can go out into the field. Look at a problem with my AR glasses on. You can see what I see. You can provide advice to me and what I need to do to fix the problem. So you're kind of saving your time as the expert. We can kind of democratize the skills and the experience out within the workforce of both types of products. So certainly there's probably one of the more interesting use cases I see with 5G in the short term around those. It's more enhanced user experiences.
Q:Let's move to our next question. So we found that was split on the section of the frequency bands supported by different regions of the 5Gs. For example, the millimeter wave was using in the United States, was rarely used in China or Europe, relatively the sub six gigahertz common use in China and Europe cannot be used in the United States.
We are the difference of the or location of the radio spectrum resources in different market, intensify the difficulty, the 5Gs, solving the channel shortage problem like you cannot you cannot let at each can all the countries to approve the new frequency band of the 5G maybe some countries don't want to because it was using a different purpose, something like that.
A:I don't see the risk of spectrum fragmentation as a major barrier to the adoption of 5G. I mean the reality is most operators we talk to are keen to deploy 5G and as many of their frequency bands that they own as possible in the longer term, we see smartphones that support many, many frequency bands globally that the years have happened to have so many skews to cope with.
This is my and either from a frequency or technology point of view, kind of this is my smartphone, one for South Korea, one for Japan, one for the US, Europe, and maybe Africa as ones of China you end up with. So ten skews of the same model just to support the different technologies, that's kind of collapse down significantly. It's almost to the extent that there are skews. There's two or three at most. And a lot of smartphones will support 20 plus frequency bands for 5G, so if I'm an operator in Spain, but has a slightly odd frequency, but not many other operators do as a reasonable chance that I see support in smartphones for those frequency bands.
I think we're seeing different strategies around, say, when you mentioned sub six gigahertz, but obviously the six gigahertz band is a key one where we’re saying differences in opinion by regulators on, do we make it unlicensed? Or do we license it for 5G mobile broadband services? I'm gonna, at the end of a day, operators need as much spectrum as they can get their hands on. Think they probably, in many scenarios, overstate just how much spectrum they need, but we don't necessarily see spectrum availability as a significant barrier to 5G adoption. There are reasonable amounts of spectrum, as you said, some countries and regions are slightly slower on deciding do we reform spectrum away from a military use or another use to sort of make it available for mobile services.
But overall spectrum to me is not a barrier to the kind of the development of the 5G ecosystem. Think 5G success is much more dependent on application developers and content providers of creating the content and the services, rather than the spectrum availability impacting some connectivity speeds or network performance.
So it's more a, it's more a service. The 5Gs challenges is a service one rather than a sort of a network deployment one.
Q:My next question is the anti-globalizations. The anti-globalization says, such as US has banned Huawei in center intensify the divisions of the something like the future of the 6G solution standards. Because if you ban a player, the major player of the mobile network solutions, you may be there. The standard maybe will division something like that. China has using the Huawei or something like that. The standard and the US or Europe using another. It's another solution such as that.
A:Yeah, we're obviously early in the cycle of 6G standardization work. Certainly, there is absolutely a scenario where we see regional fragmentation. You end up with China and the US kind of having their satellite economies that diverge and create a bit of a split. I think, I don't think that's the most likely outcome. I'm not gonna stand here and rule it out as a who knows, who knows what happens of geopolitically over the next few years.
But I think in general, the challenges we see sort of globally around saying work on the latest releases of 5G, the Huawei and other Chinese vendors aren't excluded from the standards work. It's obviously this technology, but US companies and those who need to follow US rules, can’t, can no longer to sell into certain Chinese companies, but that doesn't stop the R&D and the standards development.
I'm kind of optimistic, but we still see her as other globally so coherent development of a 6G standard, whether some players in markets, such as China or another, perhaps other countries, have full access to the technology building blocks to allow them to be a leader in that new technology is probably the biggest question mark, but I think in general, we're relatively optimistic. We're not gonna see, we're not gonna see a divided world with two so wildly divergence of 6G standards evolving when they do in sort of 2027, 2028. So there's a lot of time there. And we still see globally, all of these vendors are very active at the standardization working group. They've got a seat at the table, whether you have access to the latest chip set technology in 20, 30 years is probably a question that some of my colleagues may be able to answer much better than I could.
Q:My next question is about the course, because I think there are some one thing that about fighting that was ignored by the public for operators. Because, for example, the 5G increased the capacities of the base stations, we use the one decision. We can support more ue than 4Gs. So which can help to reducing the number of base stations and saving the cost and the same quality of the service. But in other hand, building 5G base stations at or operating the existing 4G base stations require a cost. And it's need more cost to build a four g crown core network. If you want to use in the stand alone 5Gs, and the something like the mini wave base state stations, it can cover the much less area than used to be.
A:Yeah, I know it's a good question. Ultimately, 5G is more efficient than 4G, you can carry more traffic over a 5G network. The costs are not incrementally that significant. So the chat, the issue is how you load your networks. In theory, if I've got a network that in one location, carries, regularly carries 100 gigabits per second of traffic when... it would be cheaper for me to have all of that hundred gigabits on 5G, but it would to have it on 4G or 3G, so certainly it's at a theoretical, at a cost per bit at a theoretical level, 5G is cheaper than 4G, but the challenge is, we can't suddenly move at that hundred gigabit per second of traffic. I can't flick a switch and move it from 4G to 5G overnight, it's a long-term evolution, so you have a challenge as an operator, 5G is an extra cost on top of your other network that you're running. For many, the upgrade to 5G has evolved a bit of a refresh of a, of the radio network. So you may be replacing an old 4G radio site with a new 4G and 5G site that is lower power, is more significantly, more efficient to run at a site level, but also at a sort of a per user per traffic level as well.
So there's no getting away from the fact that 5G is cheaper than 4G if we're comparing like that the challenges. That's a theory. If you're running the network, you're not comparing for like, you gotta react to the problems in front of you. And what we've seen with a rise in energy costs over the last couple of years, there's been this huge focus on operators trying to accelerate the switch off of their old legacy networks. I mean that's... the biggest challenge for operators from a operating cost and energy budget point of view is legacy networks are just really bad for that. They might not carry much traffic, but they still require a lot of energy to power.
So whether that is a 3G networks are a real energy hawk a from a radio network point of view, the same with copper networks on the wireline side. If I'm an operator and I could shut down all my local exchanges for copper and just have fiber everywhere around a pure fiber network. The savings there on my energy bill are massive. Now the reality is I've gotta do that over time.
