At the ITU-R WP5D#32 meeting held this week in Búzios, Brazil, our country completed the full submission of the IMT-2020 (5G) candidate technology proposal and received the official confirmation letter from the ITU regarding the 5G candidate technology proposal.
It is noteworthy that the 5G technology proposal submitted by our country clearly states that China’s 5G radio interface technology (RIT) is based on the 3GPP New Radio (NR) and Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technologies. Among them, NR focuses on meeting the technical requirements of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), while NB-IoT meets the technical requirements for massive machine-type communication (mMTC) scenarios.
In fact, prior to this, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology had issued a notice on comprehensively promoting the construction and development of the mobile Internet of Things (NB-IoT), reflecting our country’s high attention and active promotion of the NB-IoT industry. The inclusion of NB-IoT in our country’s submitted 5G candidate technology proposal further signifies that the domestic industrial chain’s focus on NB-IoT has risen to the level of national will, which will help the NB-IoT industry continue to soar in the 5G era.
Of course, our country is not deviating from 3GPP to create de facto standards, nor is it leveraging market and scale for self-importance, but rather fully respects technology, market, and industrial laws, as NB-IoT is currently the best technical choice on the market—NB-IoT can fully utilize the existing 4G infrastructure of operators, enhancing network utilization and output, enabling new growth for operators; it can also fully leverage the current industrial scale and mature technology of NB-IoT to accelerate the process of connecting everything and digital transformation; moreover, NB-IoT also provides vertical industries with confidence in adopting sustainable evolution and upgrading of 3GPP technologies, capable of meeting the future development needs of deep deployment and performance optimization in the industry market.
▲ Source: Tuchong Creative
NB-IoT Enters 5G Candidate Technology Proposal
At this ITU-R WP5D#32 meeting, approximately 180 representatives from global government authorities, telecommunications manufacturers, and research institutions participated. The Chinese delegation mainly consisted of representatives from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, Huawei, ZTE, China Information Communication Technologies Group, China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom.
At this meeting, our country completed the full submission of the IMT-2020 (5G) candidate technology proposal and received the official confirmation letter from the ITU regarding the 5G candidate technology proposal. China’s 5G radio interface technology (RIT) is based on 3GPP New Radio (NR) and Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) technologies. Among them, NR focuses on meeting the technical requirements of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), while NB-IoT meets the technical requirements for massive machine-type communication (mMTC) scenarios.
Our 5G technology proposal expresses our understanding of 5G technology, considers the integrity and advancement of 5G technology, and maintains the global unified standards centered on 3GPP, reflecting our national industrial interests.
According to ITU requirements, the complete 5G technology submission materials include a descriptive template for the technical proposal, a link budget template, a performance indicator compliance template, and a self-assessment report. Our 5G technology proposal and supporting materials come from multiple research results from domestic equipment manufacturers, operators, and research institutions, reflecting the collective wisdom and collaborative efforts in the domestic communications field.
Our self-assessment research results indicate that the NR+NB-IoT radio interface technology proposal can fully meet the technical vision requirements and technical indicator requirements of IMT-2020.
It is understood that from standards to chips and modules, to system devices and overall solutions, NB-IoT is mainly led by the Chinese industrial chain and has received widespread recognition and support from the global industrial chain.
Therefore, the 5G candidate technology proposal submitted by our country to the International Telecommunication Union highlights NB-IoT as one of the key focuses, reflecting our high attention and active promotion of the NB-IoT industry, and is helping the NB-IoT industry continue to soar in the 5G era through national will.
As early as June 2017, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a notice on comprehensively promoting the construction and development of the mobile Internet of Things (NB-IoT), which required: First, strengthen research on NB-IoT standards and technologies to build a complete industrial system; Second, promote the application of NB-IoT in segmented fields to gradually form a large-scale application system; Third, optimize the policy environment for NB-IoT applications to create favorable conditions for sustainable development. By 2020, the NB-IoT network is expected to achieve nationwide coverage, with deep coverage in application scenarios such as indoor, traffic networks, and underground pipelines, and the number of base stations reaching 1.5 million.
Three-Year Leap: Rapid Maturity of NB-IoT
In fact, it has only been three years since NB-IoT completed its standardization work in June 2016, and the rapidly developing NB-IoT has already traversed the path that took many years for 2G narrowband IoT.
In terms of network scale, data shows that the number of NB-IoT commercial networks globally has exceeded 90, and the number of users has achieved a three-year leap: from 3 million in 2017 to 30 million in 2018, and has exceeded 50 million users in the first half of this year, with an expectation to surpass 100 million by the end of this year. Applications in industries such as smart water meters, smart gas meters, electric vehicle tracking, and smart smoke detectors are expected to reach tens of millions of connections within one to two years, and are likely to quickly reach a scale of one billion. Domestically, the enthusiasm of the three major operators for NB-IoT continues to rise, with the industry expecting that 900,000 NB-IoT base stations will be built in China by 2019.
With its wide coverage, low power consumption, low cost, and large connectivity features, NB-IoT has become the mainstream technology in the cellular IoT field. According to the latest research data from market research firm Counterpoint IoT, the number of global cellular IoT connections is expected to exceed 5 billion by 2025, with NB-IoT contributing nearly half of that.
In terms of industrial chain scale, the emergence of massive connectivity demand for NB-IoT has created strong demand for NB-IoT modules and NB-IoT chips. For example, on the chip side, NB-IoT and other IoT SoCs (which integrate MCU and modem/baseband) are driving the next wave of IoT, with chip companies including HiSilicon, Qualcomm, MediaTek, and others competing in the NB-IoT SoC chip market. Currently, there are 14 NB-IoT chip manufacturers, 115 module models, and over 1,500 industry partners, with standards gradually being established in more than ten industries including water, gas, fire protection, white goods, locks, manhole covers, and bicycles. NB-IoT has fully demonstrated its capability to replace 2G/3G narrowband IoT technologies.
In terms of module prices, NB-IoT prices have approached those of 2G modules. It is reported that the current price of an NB-IoT module using a certain domestic NB-IoT chip can be as low as 15 RMB, and with the increase in chip shipments and further price reductions, the price of this NB-IoT module is expected to drop below 12 RMB by the end of the year.
▲ Source: Tuchong Creative
4G/5G Win-Win: Commercial Prospects Worth Looking Forward To
As the industry enters the 5G era of connecting everything, NB-IoT also welcomes new development opportunities.
5G offers advantages such as ultra-high bandwidth above Gbps, millisecond-level ultra-low latency, and high reliability. In addition to being used for enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) in the initial commercial phase, fully utilizing the 5G cellular network will also drive the development of ultra-broadband and low-latency IoT, promoting digital transformation in industries.
Many have previously expressed concerns about the future evolution of NB-IoT in the era of high bandwidth 5G.
In fact, regarding the future direction of NB-IoT, 3GPP has long pointed out the direction: NB-IoT will continue to serve 5G LPWA use cases, with 5G LPWA being mMTC (massive machine-type communication), one of the three major application scenarios of 5G, and an indispensable part of the 5G technical specifications. In March 2016, 3GPP first established the R13 version of the NB-IoT standard, which has now evolved to R14, and 3GPP is currently advancing the formulation of the R15 and R16 version standards for NB-IoT, all of which will become part of the 5G IoT.
Therefore, the 5G candidate technology proposal submitted by our country to the International Telecommunication Union highlights NB-IoT as one of the key focuses, which is also consistent with the technical evolution roadmap of international standardization organizations such as 3GPP. However, although the low power consumption and wide coverage characteristics of mMTC are closely aligned with the scenarios that NB-IoT meets, the performance indicators of the two are not on the same level, so NB-IoT in the 5G era must strengthen capabilities such as edge networks.
In addition, NB-IoT will coexist and thrive with existing networks. NB-IoT based on 4G and NB-IoT based on 5G will coexist for a long time; the two are not in a competitive or substitutive relationship, but rather complementary. Currently, vertical industries are still in the exploratory stage of applying cellular technologies, and using mature technologies like LTE with a complete industrial chain is a more convenient choice. At the same time, 5G points out the future evolution path of 4G, thus providing vertical industries with confidence in adopting sustainable evolution and upgrading of 3GPP technologies, capable of meeting the future development needs of deep deployment and performance optimization in the industry market.
It is reported that in subsequent ITU-R WP5D meetings, our country will cooperate with various countries and regional organizations to participate deeply in the ITU’s evaluation and coordination process. The ITU will officially announce the birth of the 5G technology proposal at the WP5D#35 meeting to be held in June 2020, based on the results of the evaluation and coordination.
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