Now that it has entered 2019, it is just around the corner that 5G commercial is coming soon. The three major domestic operators have already opened their own 5G base stations in Beijing. On the other hand, the Wi-Fi Alliance also launched the Wi-Fi 6 standard in the latter part of last year, and will vigorously promote the popularity of Wi-Fi 6 terminal products. It’s a coincidence that the pace of advancement of the two is so close.
No wonder all along, there have been rumors that "5G will replace Wi-Fi." So, is there a "competition" relationship between the two, which is what the people say? We have something to say about this. As the first program of the new year, in this issue of the "One to One" video section, we will focus on the topic of "Whether Wi-Fi will be replaced by 5G".
1. The Wi-Fi market has not stopped growing.
From the latest IDC data, the Wi-Fi market is still growing, but the growth rate is somewhat slower than in previous years. From the perspective of the entire market, in fact, not only is the growth of the Wi-Fi market slowing down, but the construction of 4G to 5G is also in the wait-and-see stage, and the related investment in 5G is also slowing down.
2, 5G and W-iFi are not substitutes but complementary
5G and WLAN implementation technologies are different. The supported scenarios and applicability are different, and the implementation experience is different. From the perspective of management and service expansion, WiFi is more flexible than 5G.
3. Compared to 5G, Wi-Fi can bring higher bandwidth and better experience for high-density scenarios.
If 5G wants to meet the peak demand of high-density environment, it must deploy enough micro base stations, and the cost is much higher than that of Wi-Fi. It is estimated that the input cost of 5G base station is Wi-Fi if the same bandwidth and performance are to be achieved. More than three times, and the 5G micro base station is expected to start large-scale construction after 2022, and the time lags.
4, even if the future 5G unlimited traffic, it is impossible to replace the campus WLAN
According to more than 2,000 higher education data in the country, the monthly average WiFi traffic of teachers and students is 20G, and the 4G traffic is 5G/month. Although the coverage of 4G continues to increase, the use of WiFi traffic is still much larger than 4G. In addition, the cost of deploying wireless APs is lower, and it is more suitable for short-distance high-density throughput network deployment, ensuring everyone's access bandwidth.