I believe that most people have had the experience of losing their mobile phones. As the number of base station deployments in the 4G and 5G era increases, network outages are becoming less and less common, and network speeds are getting faster and faster. Today, China has built the world's largest mobile communication network, and its network coverage capacity ranks in the forefront.
This is not enough. In January this year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other 11 departments jointly launched the "signal upgrade" special action, clearly putting forward the goal of "achieving continuous coverage of 30,000 kilometers of railways, 500,000 kilometers of highways and 200 subway lines by the end of 2025", in addition to the requirements: "The average downlink access rate of the mobile network is not less than 220Mbps, and the average uplink access rate is not less than 45Mbps".
Why is it necessary to promote the "signal upgrade"? Just as the Spring Festival of the Year of the Dragon is coming, hundreds of millions of people have flowed, bringing a huge number of mobile application use scenarios, which can be called the "touchstone" of mobile network quality.
From a personal point of view, when returning to my hometown, I need to take the subway, high-speed rail, and commuter bus. Among them, in some stations of the subway, the mobile phone signal that performs reasonably on weekdays is overwhelmed with the peak of the Spring Festival, there is a signal but no network, and the short ** brush comes to an abrupt halt halfway, and has to "turn to" applications such as photo albums that do not need to be connected to the Internet. The high-speed rail signal is also not stable enough, and interruptions occur from time to time. The performance of commuter buses between counties and townships is acceptable and commendable.
From the perspective of the surrounding understanding, relatives and friends who have returned to their hometowns across the country generally agree that the mobile phone signal has improved in the past few years, and there is no problem with daily use, but they also encounter poor signals from time to time. Returning to the hometown during the Spring Festival, everyone's feelings are quite consistent, and the trip to pick up **, brush short**, and play games, can only be said to be unsatisfactory, and there are many things that need to be improved. If it can be improved, the user experience will be taken to the next level.
As far as the observation of the Spring Festival in the Year of the Dragon is concerned, the special action of "signal upgrade" is very necessary. Facing the Internet access needs of 1.4 billion people and the booming digital economy, China's network infrastructure construction must not be complacent, and must come up with better performance. In addition, according to the latest "National Mobile Network Quality" monitoring report, the average downlink and uplink access rate of China's 5G network lags behind South Korea, the Middle East and other countries and regions, and there is great room for improvement.
Industry was quick to express its support for the "Signal Upgrade" campaign and quickly launched concrete actions. It can be seen from the news that ZTE's attitude is particularly positive, and on the eve of the Spring Festival, it has carried out a series of "signal upgrading" actions with operators:
For the metro business district, China Unicom Shenzhen and ZTE selected the "Eye of Shenzhen", the super hub Gangxia North Subway Station, to complete the opening and application of the 5G-A SuperMIMO three-carrier aggregation scenario, using SuperMIMO networking, combined with the N78 frequency band to deploy 5G-A three-carrier aggregation technology, which has a larger bandwidth than the N78+N1 three-carrier and achieves a downlink peak rate of nearly 5Gbps.
For the high-speed rail scenario, China Mobile Hebei and ZTE have completed the construction and network optimization of the 4G 5G boutique private network of the Hebei section of the Jinxing intercity high-speed railway, achieving full coverage of the 4G and 5G dual networks of the Hebei section of the Jinxing intercity with an average downlink rate of more than 500Mbps and an average uplink rate of over 120Mbps when the train speed is 250 kilometers per hour.
For rural scenarios, Xinjiang Mobile and ZTE jointly built the first 700M+900M dual-band dual-mode base station in Xinjiang in Bortala Mongolian Autonomous Prefecture, Xinjiang, using "700M and 900M common antenna feeder + common RRU equipment" to realize the rapid deployment of 4G 5G network at the same site in rural areas.
There are other cases that I will not repeat. It is worth noting that in the process of promoting "signal upgrading", ZTE has begun to verify the latest 5G-A technology, which can increase the speed by 10 times compared with 5G, which is expected to greatly improve the user's mobile Internet experience and provide a better environment for high-bandwidth mobile application innovation such as VR AR and glasses-free 3D.
In addition to ZTE, more manufacturers have also taken action to cooperate with operators around the world to carry out network tests in different scenarios and promote "signal upgrading". "With the in-depth advancement of mobile network applications, the public's demand for mobile networks has changed from 'usable' to 'easy to use', and 'how to build a network that the people can use well' is an urgent issue facing the high-quality development of mobile networks. Wen Ku, chairman of the China Communications Standards Association and director of the Steering Committee of the Mobile Network Quality Pilot Phalanx, pointed out.
In the author's opinion, this is a silent process, and users will gradually perceive the improvement of network quality, find the disappearance of signal dead spots, and play new mobile applications. The various scenes of the Spring Festival are an excellent stage to test the "signal upgrade", perhaps next year's Spring Festival, the next year's Spring Festival, users can intuitively feel the changes brought by the "signal upgrade" during the journey.