On June 6, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) announced that China's 5G already has a commercial foundation and formally issued 5G commercial licenses to China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom and China Radio and Television. Together with the 5G speed test video of Mr. He, which was a big hit on the Internet some time ago, the general public's expectation for the actual application of 5G can be said to have been raised to a higher level with the real arrival of 5G.
Of course the natural bearer of 5G applications is still all kinds of 5G terminal equipment, so in yesterday's (June 26) opening of the MWC2019 Shanghai exhibition, Huawei, ZTE, OPPO, vivo and other cell phone manufacturers have exhibited 5G smartphones with commercial capabilities, 5G terminal and its application of the display became the absolute core of the day.
However, at the same time, at the exhibition, China Mobile said that starting from January 1 next year, 5G terminals must have SA (independent networking) mode, so starting from January 1 next year, NSA (non-independent networking) cell phones can't enter the network; China Telecom also said that it adheres to the direction of the SA target network, and strives for 2020 to start 5G independent networking.
So what's the difference between 5G independent and non-independent networking? And how will it affect the wave of 5G switching that will follow?
In fact, SA and NSA are the two standards defined by the network standards development organization 3GPP for building 5G networks.
In short, SA is about building a new network for 5G, including base stations, backhaul links, and a core network, while NSA is about utilizing existing 4G network infrastructure and deploying a 5G network on top of it.
To this end, 3GPP listed a total of eight 5G architecture options in June 2016, including Option1, Option2, Option 3/3a, Option 4/4a, Option 5, Option 6, Option 7/7a, and Option 8/8a, and subsequently optimized them to five (two for SA and three for NSA).
In addition, 3GPP has defined three major application directions for 5G - eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband, also known as cellular data), mMTC (Massive Machine Class Communication, for IoT), and uRLLC (Ultra-Reliable, Low-Latency Communication, for driverless applications, etc.).
Of course, as ordinary consumers we do not need to understand the technical details behind these complex networking methods, we only need to know that the 5G NSA networking method, which can share infrastructure with the existing 4G network, can save operators' network investment and help them roll out the 5G network in a short period of time, but its drawbacks are also very obvious: because of the constraints on the carrying capacity and latency of the 4G core network, it cannot really support uRLLC and mMTC scenarios like 5G SA, which means it cannot be used for IoT applications and does not have the low-latency experience of the real 5G. However, its disadvantages are also obvious: because of the limitations of 4G core network capacity and latency, it can't really support uRLLC and mMTC scenarios like 5G SA, which means that it can't be used for IoT applications, and it doesn't have the low-latency experience of 5G, which is obviously unfavorable for the long-term development of 5G.
Therefore, it can be said that a 5G network with SA networking is the "real 5G".
From the issuance of 5G commercial licenses several months in advance, and now directly vigorously promote the 5G SA network, telecom operators and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology to make such a decision, I believe that behind the overall planning of the country for the 5G. But what impact will such a decision have on our consumers' purchase of 5G cell phone terminals that will soon be available on a large scale?
In fact, the solution used in the vast majority of 5G phones today is either the Qualcomm Snapdragon 855 with the Snapdragon X50 baseband or the Huawei Kirin 980 with the Baron 5000 baseband.
With this decision, Qualcomm is in a bit of an awkward situation, as the Snapdragon X50, released in 2016, is a transitional product that only supports single-mode 5G NSA, not 5G SA and 4G/3G/2G networks, and will need to be paired with an additional X24 baseband in order to support 4G and below networks. As for Qualcomm's X55 baseband, which was announced on February 19th and supports both 5G SA and NSA and is backward-compatible with 4G/3G/2G networks, there are no devices with it yet.
So for consumers, if they want to change the 5G phone other than Huawei, it may be better to wait until the release of the phone equipped with the X55 baseband before buying it, after all, if the phone only supports NSA and in the case of the current 5G phone price is generally high, the future network coverage will surely become an annoying thing.
As for Huawei, although its Baron 5000 baseband supports 5G SA and NSA and is compatible with 4G/3G/2G networks, and the Huawei Mate 20 X, equipped with the Baron 5000 baseband, has also obtained China's first 5G terminal telecommunication equipment network license, there is no question of future network support, but its price of 12,800 yuan should still be a bit high for most people.
In addition, Huawei officials have also said that the fastest 5G thousand dollar machine will be listed at the end of next year. Therefore, for ordinary consumers, whether from the point of view of network support or cost-effective point of view, wait until next year to change the 5G phone may be a more reasonable choice.
Posted by Anvon, please cite the source when reprinting or quoting this article:https://anvon.com/en/29.html