A beautiful 5G future needs more fiber optic connections
A beautiful 5G future needs more fiber optic connections
At present, the competition around 5G is rapidly heating up around the world, and countries with leading technologies are competing to deploy their own 5G networks. South Korea has taken the lead in launching the world's first commercial 5G network in April this year. Two days later, US telecom operator Verizon followed up with a 5G network. South Korea's successful launch of 5G commercial network confirms the results of A10 Networks' research - Asia Pacific is among the world's leaders in the planning and implementation of 5G network deployment. At the same time, China has recently issued a 5G commercial license, demonstrating its leading position in 5G deployment.
It is expected that by 2025, the Asia Pacific region will become the world's largest 5G market. According to the Global System for Mobile Communications (GSMA) report, Asian mobile operators plan to invest nearly $200 billion over the next few years to upgrade 4G networks and launch new 5G networks.
The ultra-high-speed 5G network, the fifth-generation mobile Internet connection, is expected to achieve up to 1000 times the bandwidth increase, with single-user speeds of 10 Gbps and ultra-low latency of less than 5 milliseconds. The Internet of Things (IoT), the interconnected digital device system, is one of the areas that is expected to accelerate with 5G technology. The Internet of Things is becoming more and more popular in almost all commercial and consumer use cases today. From smartphones to GPS, any connected device that transmits information over the network needs to use the Internet of Things, and 5G technology will provide network support for these connected devices.
5G and IoT require fiber infrastructure
5G and IoT technologies will penetrate every corner of our lives. Upgrading the current network infrastructure to cope with the future of highly connected is a top priority for businesses and organizations, and network operators play a key role in advancing the next generation of networks.
The 5G coverage area requires a large number of fiber connections to ensure network transmission. In addition to capacity considerations, higher levels of 5G performance requirements related to network diversity, availability, and coverage need to be met, and these goals need to be achieved by increasing the number of interconnected fiber networks. ResearchandMarkets' survey shows that with the advancement of communication technology and the large-scale application of fiber optics in IT and telecommunications, China and India will lead revenue growth in the field of fiber-optic networks.
To reduce power consumption and optimize space utilization, many operators are now transitioning to a centralized radio access network (C-RAN) network architecture, where fiber-optic connections also play a key role as a centralized base station baseband unit (BBU). A forward connection is provided between a remote radio unit (RRH) located in a plurality of base stations located several miles away. C-RAN provides an effective way to increase network capacity, reliability and flexibility while reducing operational costs. At the same time, C-RAN is also an important step on the road to the Cloud RAN. In the cloud RAN, the processing of the BBU is "virtualized", thereby providing greater flexibility and scalability to meet the needs of future networks.
Another major factor driving demand for fiber optics is 5G Fixed Wireless Access (FWA), which is an ideal alternative to providing broadband networks to consumers today. FWA is one of the first 5G applications deployed to help wireless carriers compete for a higher share of the home broadband service market. The speed of 5G ensures that FWA can meet the home Internet traffic transmission including OTT video service. Although the deployment of fixed 5G broadband access is faster and more convenient than fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), the speed of bandwidth growth has put more pressure on the network, which means more fiber needs to be deployed to deal with it. This challenge. In fact, the investment of FTTH networks by network operators over the past 10 years has also inadvertently laid the foundation for 5G deployment.
Winning 5G
We are at the critical crossroads of wireless network development. The release of the 3.5 GHz and 5 GHz bands has put operators on the fast lane to the 5G connection. Network operators need to adopt the correct connection strategy to meet the future network.
We are about to usher in a world of super-connectivity, and the user experience will be improved by the improved performance of cellular base station wireless access points. Ultimately, however, the quality and reliability of the wireless network will depend on the wired (fiber-optic) network that carries the communication between the 5G cellular base stations. In summary, 5G and IoT deployments will require dense fiber network support to meet high bandwidth and low latency performance requirements.
Although a few countries may have taken the lead in the 5G competition, it is still too early to announce the winner. In the future, 5G will light up our daily lives, and the correct deployment of fiber-optic network infrastructure will become the “economic basis” for releasing the unlimited potential of 5G.