China s optical communication industry has ushered in an important moment of development and transfo

Mondo Finance Updated on 2024-02-05

"Promote the sustainable and healthy development of the optical cable industry" - at the 2023 'TOEM Forum Council held in Shanghai recently, industry experts and raw material and equipment entrepreneurs gathered together to delve into the market dynamics, jointly study and judge the current situation and future development trend of the industry, and point out the direction for the development of the industry in the new year.

Technological evolutionThe market influences the evolution of technology to a large extent. The largest customers in the optical communications industry are carriers, and at the moment it seems,Operators will consider five dimensions when making technical decisions, namely, whether the industrial chain is mature, the cost-effectiveness of new technologies, the dynamics of competitors, the needs of users, and the support of various existing terminals. The development of communication services and technologies, generally maintained the evolution trend of "every decade generation", this trend is especially obvious in wireless technology, the development of today's 2G and 3G has tended to be eliminated, 4G began in 2011 and 5G in 2020 is basically mature, and at the same time, the integration of space, ground and air 6G is still in the pre-research stage, and the practical application of network architecture and technical standards in the 6G era may not be until about 2030. Since 2019, China has launched 5G commercial use, and according to the latest data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of November 2023, the total number of 5G base stations completed in China in four years has reached 32820,000, with the joint efforts of the whole industry, such a great achievement. According to incomplete statistics, in the early stage of 5G construction, each new base station needs roughly 33 picometers of access layer fiber optic cables, while the current density with the deployment of base stations has dropped to 2About 2 km. The downward trend in usage and the completion of most of the 5G construction constitute the current market background.

At present, the transmission network technology is in the period when 100G is mature and 400G is beginning to be introduced. In order to match 400g or even higher 800g, etc., the fiber is made of g652.D to G654.Development is an inevitable choice. Nowadays ordinary g652.The fiber optic cable has been extremely compressed, and operators and users have gradually regarded it as a low-value consumable similar to the five types of cables, especially the small number of fiber optic cables, which have been lower than the labor costs required. The optical cable industry needs to strike a balance between technological innovation and market expansion, and also pay attention to the collaborative application and even embedding of optical fiber and cable and infrastructure, and meet the communication and sensing functions at the same time, which may be the only way for the construction of new digital infrastructure.

Special cables are an aspect that the industry is very concerned about, but the research and development of high-precision special products still has strong challenges for China's optical cable industry. For example, the g. for the seabed654.D optical fiber, China has not yet reached the advanced level of foreign countries, the market competitiveness is weak, so this kind of ultra-low loss products have become a typical "neck" technology, which needs to be solved by concerted efforts in the industry; However, considering the monopoly of developed countries and foreign policy interference, the supply scale of such products is small, the capacity of domestic and foreign markets is limited, and the constraints of technology and cost and other factors have posed obvious pressure on Chinese enterprises to pick up this pearl product. In addition, in the field of special cables, it is also necessary to pay attention to the high reliability of raw materials, for example, such as OPGW or submarine fiber optic cables required ointment and insulating materials, the proportion of dependence on imports is still very large, the demand for these special products is small, difficult, enterprises need to make long-term scientific and technological research arrangements, but also encourage enterprises in the industrial chain to cooperate with end users, supply and demand sides (such as manufacturers and operators) to carry out technical force cooperation, investment risk sharing, and jointly promote the research and development and market application of high-tech special cables.

Computing power developmentThe report of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China has made an in-depth elaboration, and the development of the digital economy has become part of the overall layout of China's macroeconomy, and the computing infrastructure has been incorporated into the national action to deepen the sharing of basic telecommunication facilities. The high-quality development of computing power is guaranteed by policies at all levels, the quality of infrastructure construction is accelerated and the layout of intelligent computing power is accelerated, and the innovative application of computing power with deep integration of data and reality is expanded on a large scale, and the industrial scale continues to grow, becoming a new engine for economic growth.

In February this year, the "Overall Layout Plan for the Construction of Digital China" was approved, proposing to systematically optimize the layout of computing infrastructure, promote the efficient complementarity and collaborative linkage of computing power in the east and west, and guide the reasonable echelon layout of general data centers, supercomputing centers, intelligent computing centers, and edge data centers, and clarify the key tasks for the development of China's computing industry in the future. From the perspective of China's computing power development pattern, Internet technology companies and operators have made in-depth investment, and have achieved fruitful results in the total scale of China's computing power ranking second in the world, with an average annual growth rate of about 30 in the past five years, especially in 2023, which is a year of explosive growth of China's computing power industry.

Operators are also actively entering the computing power industry. At present, the business development of operators mainly includes two parts, one is the traditional track represented by conventional communication services, and the other is the new track represented by computing infrastructure. As China's communication penetration rate has exceeded the global average, it will be difficult for the traditional track to advance in the future and may continue to maintain a slow growth pattern, so the new track will become the focus of development worthy of full consideration. With the strong support of first-class enterprises at all levels, scientific research institutes, commercial customers and the majority of first-class businessmen, operators have comprehensively laid out the "Eastern Data and Western Computing" project, and are actively participating in the construction of national data center clusters in Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei, Yangtze River Delta, Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area, Chengdu-Chongqing, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou, Gansu, Ningxia and other places.

Overseas developmentThere are considerable opportunities in overseas markets. For example, the number of 5G base stations in China accounts for about 70% of the world, which proves the excellent competitiveness of China's communications industry and makes such a huge 5G network construction a feasible choice. However, in many overseas countries, 4G is still the mainstay, and the market potential is large; Compared with other industries, the communication and information industry is also one of China's advantages to the international market, and at the same time meets the overall requirements of the country's "Belt and Road", "going out" and "building a world-class enterprise", and is an important part of the "network power".

In the overseas development of the communication optoelectronic industry, it is necessary to pay deep attention to the risks faced. First of all, China's engineering construction, communication operations and content services in the overseas development of geopolitical factors interfered, some enterprises have experienced foreign sanctions, suppression, and even after winning the bid was canceled, but in general, a considerable number of Chinese communication advantage enterprises are gradually going overseas, from the product, project construction, market operation, etc., to the deployment of information and communication infrastructure, for the industry has brought new growth points. Second, the weakness of the global economy has continued since the outbreak of the pandemic, and many developing countries have experienced economic difficulties and even foreign exchange exposure, which has led to the possibility that Chinese telecommunications companies may face foreign exchange settlement problems when conducting business.

Overall, China's communication and information industry is facing an important moment, 5G as the representative of the technology development has been relatively mature, the network layout is basically established, before the full progress of 6G technology, large-scale commercialization, the pace of construction in the field of wireless networks may be slowed down than in previous years, but in the field of computing power, data center investment will maintain a large investment. In the next five years, optoelectronic communication materials companies can consider gradually shifting the focus of products from 5G construction to products that are compatible with the construction of computing power and national digital infrastructure, as well as the R&D and application of special high-tech.

Related Pages