Ten years across, China's Internet "butterfly change" growth

 Over the past decade, China's Internet industry has undergone earth-shaking changes, which have not only profoundly changed people's way of life, but also promoted social progress and development. Today's "Time and Space Observation", we focus on the changes of the Chinese Internet in the past ten years. From 3G to 5G, what new applications will the increase in data transmission capabilities lead to? How far away is 6G technology? What opportunities has China won in the Internet Decade? What are the challenges ahead?

First, let's look at the leapfrog development of Internet infrastructure and technology over the past decade through a set of data. According to the China Internet Development Report (2023), from December 2012 to June 2023, the number of Internet users in China increased from 564 million to 1.079 billion, and the Internet penetration rate increased from 42.1% to 76.4%, forming the largest and most vibrant digital society in the world.

In the past decade, China's network infrastructure has been improved by leaps and bounds, and the average download rate of broadband networks has increased by nearly 40 times. The mobile communication network has evolved from 3G to 5G, and the world's largest 5G network has been built. By September 2023, China has built a total of 3.189 million 5G base stations and 737 million 5G mobile phone users. Gigabit Optical network has the capacity to cover more than 500 million households; The "East number and West calculation" project entered the comprehensive construction stage from the system layout, and the total scale of computing power reached 1.97 trillion trillion floating point operations per second.

"5G leads" automobile aircraft into the "unmanned land"



In the past ten years, China's Internet has developed rapidly, from 3G to 5G, what new applications have been spawned by the improvement of data transmission capacity? Driverless driving is arguably the most remarkable achievement in recent years. Based on the strong coverage of 5G communication, in the past year, Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hefei and other places have explored autonomous driving unmanned commercial practice, the construction of autonomous driving demonstration zones has flourished, and more and more cars and even manned aircraft are accelerating into the "unmanned land". In Luogang Park in Hefei, Anhui province, the newly created full-space unmanned driving system has given many citizens a different travel and play experience.



A fleet of 12 unmanned manned aircraft took off from Luogang Park in Hefei, Anhui province, to celebrate the Lantern Festival this year. The orderly take-off of these aircraft, constantly changing formation patterns, has aroused a lot of interest.

The flight of unmanned aircraft is dependent on stable transmission and remote control. In the past ten years, the construction of China's network infrastructure has accelerated, from "3G breakthrough" to "4G synchronization" to "5G leadership", which not only improves the data transmission capacity, but also expands the application scenario, and gives birth to the rapid development of "low-altitude economy".



For every thing that flies in the sky, there is something that runs on the earth. In Luogang Park in Hefei City, a stable communication signal allows a mobile phone to solve the problem of traveling to eat. Shopping hungry, play thirsty, tourists just scan the code is desirable goods. But it's not delivered by a delivery guy, it's delivered to you by a drone operated by a mobile phone.

The driverless bus, which is small and cute in appearance, has no cab or steering wheel, and can automatically follow the designated route and stop as long as the safety officer activates the start button.



Luogang Park is a full-space unmanned system application demonstration project built by Hefei. 18 4G base stations and 18 5G base stations distributed in Luogang Central Park can simultaneously meet 105,000 device access. Here, unmanned application scenarios such as unmanned aircraft, unmanned buses, and drop-down logistics drones operate in an orderly manner.

From 3G to 5G tower people's network ten years

Tall buildings can not be separated from a solid foundation, and modern network coverage also needs hardware protection. In 2014, after the Party Central Committee proposed the strategy of network power, in order to help major communication operators rapidly deploy 5G networks at low cost and share 5G new infrastructure to a greater extent, China Tower Company came into being, providing important support for the network coverage of the three major operators, and the construction of the tower is inseparable from the hard work of a famous builder. Next, let's follow the reporter's camera closer to the daily work of the tower builder.



Jiang Tao, the project manager of the China Tower Shangrao branch, is organizing workers to ship the tower. Just after the Lantern Festival, he took several workers to Lingshan scenic spot on the outskirts of Shangrao to begin their installation.

The big guy they are installing is a transport drone just installed by the tower company in recent years, which can carry a maximum weight of 200 kilograms and can quickly transport some small pieces to the destination.

After successfully transporting the first batch of components to their destination, the drone is quickly flown back for another shipment. After a few round trips, most of the equipment was successfully transported to its destination high in the mountains. However, some of the big ones still need manual work. Although it is noon, but the temperature on the high mountain is still close to zero degrees Celsius, facing the slope of nearly 60 degrees, Jiang Tao and they had to stop.



The road became narrower and more dangerous. They had to replace the way of carrying four people side by side with the way of two before and two after to continue to go to the end. From his entry ten years ago to today, Jiang Tao and his workers have installed hundreds of various communication towers and witnessed the upgrading of national network communication from 3G to 5G. In the era of no drone transport, they rely on people to carry mules out of countless mountain roads, and he is physically and mentally tired.



Before they rested for a while, several people lifted the cabinet and walked on. After more than two hours of trek, Jiang Tao and they finally brought the cabinet weighing more than 300 pounds safely to the destination on the top of the mountain.

In the past ten years, Shangrao Tower alone has built more than 5,000 communication towers of various types, making Shangrao City's natural village network coverage rate reach more than 98%; Through the overall construction of the tower, the sharing rate has also increased from 7% to more than 85%, greatly reducing the duplication of construction, saving a lot of land resources and industry investment.

Breaking into 6G No man's Land: Cool and bitter

In the past decade, China's mobile communication technology has completed a leapfrog development from "3G breakthrough" to "4G synchronization" to "5G leadership". Today, in the evolution of mobile communications every decade, "6G" communication technology has become a new highland for countries to seize. To what extent is the 6G technology advanced in our country? How far is it from us ordinary people? We recently walked into the Zijinshan Laboratory in Nanjing, Jiangsu Province. This research platform has gathered more than 1,000 experts in the industry and university teachers and students to jointly challenge the peak of 6G network communication technology research and development.



Reporters into the Zijinshan laboratory, each experimental building is a busy scene. Not long ago, it completed the independent research and development of Bayesian learning baseband chips, and now they are developing the second generation of chips.



The success of this independent chip development has greatly reduced the equipment cost of 6G base stations. To complete this technological innovation is the project group led by Zhang Chuan, the research group composed of "70", "80" and "90", with less than 10 full-time personnel, but relying on the laboratory platform, here with more than 20 students in Southeast University to complete the development. Research and development groups like this, Zijinshan Laboratory has formed dozens of independent and cooperate with each other, focusing on a single problem and forming a joint force.



It is after repeated falls and trials and errors that Zijinshan Laboratory's future network communication research and development continues to accumulate phased results. At present, the baseband circuit automatic generation software system independently developed by Zijinshan Laboratory has completed the first version, and the software and hardware technology research and development around 5G to 6G network communication iteration is steadily advancing.

The team of researchers told reporters that the research and development of 6G related technologies is very cool, and the homophone of "cool" is "very bitter".

What opportunities has China won? What are the challenges ahead?



At present, the industry generally believes that 6G communication capacity will reach more than 10 times that of 5G, 5G to 6G development is not only faster, more importantly, it is from the "Internet of everything" to "all things intelligent, digital twin" transformation process. 6G will promote more immersive holographic video, and realize the linkage of the physical world, the virtual world, and the human world. From 3G to 6G, from the "Internet of Everything" to the "intelligent connection of everything, digital twin", the development of China's Internet in the past ten years, so that China's industrial industry and high-tech field in the world's top level of competition to win what opportunities? What has been achieved? What are the bigger challenges ahead? Let's listen to Li Xiaodong, vice president of the Internet Society of China.

Li Xiaodong said that after ten years of development of China's Internet, the number of Internet users has nearly doubled, and China has the world's first number of Internet users, which means that China has the world's largest 2C market. The market is home to some of the top 30 Chinese Internet companies in the world. At present, China's digital economy ranks second in the world. China leads the world in the scale and capacity of infrastructure, for example, the total number of 5G base stations is the first in the world, and the ownership of IPVideo address resources in the next generation Internet is also the first in the world. This market size has prompted Internet companies to accumulate a large number of key development factors such as talent, technology and capital, and has a good foundation. In addition, we have also accumulated a large amount of data, according to relevant statistics, the possession of data resources in China ranks second in the world, accounting for nearly 10% of the world, which lays a very good foundation for future competition. At present, China is also actively promoting the integration of the Internet, industrial manufacturing, agriculture and other primary and secondary industries, which will win opportunities for China to participate in global competition. Of course, there are also some challenges, such as the number of data resources is second in the world, but the knowledge density of data needs to be improved. In addition, the phenomenon of "data island" is still very serious, and how to connect "data island" and bridge the "data gap" is a very serious work. Need to be brave to break through. In addition, it is also necessary to bring together global talents, improve basic research and development, guide capital to invest in high-tech fields, and improve fault tolerance mechanisms and risk investment levels for China's high-tech development.