5G industry major listed companies: China Telecom (00728), China Unicom (600050), China Mobile (00941), etc.
The core data of this article: 5G industry chain investment in each link proportion, the scale of investment in fixed assets for mobile communications, mobile communication network equipment (main equipment) investment scale, cell phone base station antenna investment scale, mobile communication network planning, operation and maintenance investment scale, etc.
5G industry chain links are more, mainly contains communication network equipment, base station antenna, radio frequency, optical module, etc.
5G industry chain is very wide, containing parts, main equipment, The 5G industry chain is very wide, including components, main equipment, operators and downstream applications. The front-end investment mainly includes wireless equipment, transmission equipment, base station equipment, small base station, optical communication equipment, network planning and implementation. From the application direction, 5G applications include industrial digitization, intelligent life, digital governance in three major directions; 5G general applications (i.e., applications that may be applied to various 5G scenarios in various industries in the future), including 4K/8K ultra-high-definition video, VR/AR, drones/vehicles/vessels, and robots in four major categories; 5G applications to industry, healthcare, education, security and other fields, will also produce X types of innovative industry applications.
According to the Prospect Industry Research Institute, it is expected that the investment share of each link of the 5G industry chain during the 5G period will be different, in which the communication network equipment accounts for the largest share of 35.9%, and the investment shares of the base station antenna, radio frequency, fiber optic cable, and optical module will be 3.5%, 12.3%, 3.3%, and 5.3%, respectively.
Total investment in the 5G industry chain is expected to exceed 1.8 trillion, with the peak of investment occurring in 2023 and 2024
China's 5G advancement pace is at the world's most advanced level, in line with the life cycle of foreign cell phones. At the same time, due to the diversity of 5G application scenarios (enhanced mobile broadband, massive connectivity, high reliability and low latency application scenarios) and the different progress of each industry, it makes the investment in 5G will be a relatively long term process, and the 5G main construction cycle will last for 5-6 years.
In terms of total investment, the Prospect Industry Research Institute expects China's four major operators (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Radio and Television) and China Tower 5G total investment is expected to be more than 1.8 trillion, an increase of more than 60% compared to the 4G era. From the point of view of the investment rhythm, the investment peak appeared in 2023 and 2024; due to the industry technology, product features continue to upgrade, application scenarios, the growth of the investment scale after 2024 is still maintained at a high level.
Communication network equipment accounted for the largest proportion of industry chain investment, base station antenna and network planning and operation and maintenance investment scale will be more than 60 billion yuan and 140 billion yuan
Communication network equipment is the core link of the cell phone system, mainly including wireless, transmission, core network and business bearer support and other system equipment. According to operator estimates, in the 4G system in the communications network equipment investment of more than 400 billion yuan, due to the number of base stations carrying services and support than the 4G has increased significantly, the Prospect Industry Research Institute is expected to 5G period of the overall investment in the main equipment will increase by 45%, is expected to 5G period of the total investment in communications network equipment (main equipment) investment accounted for the proportion of the total investment in the 5G has reached 35.9%, and the total amount of investment will be nearly 650 billion yuan.
Communication network equipment as the core link of 5G investment, the investment cycle is longer, is expected to 5G period will have a large-scale investment; 2023, with the macro station and small station construction number of double discharge to enhance the communication network equipment (main equipment) investment scale is expected to usher in the peak, reaching 96.8 billion yuan.
Reference information:
July 18, 2021, China Mobile announced a total price of more than 38 billion yuan of 5G 700M wireless network main equipment centralized purchasing bidding announcement, the collection scale **** about 480,000 stations.
August 1, 2021, China Telecom and China Unicom announced the 2021 5G SA construction project wireless main equipment (2.1G) joint centralized purchasing project The result is that the centralized procurement scale*** is about 242,000 stations, and the maximum bidding limit is set at 20.532 billion yuan (excluding tax).
According to the statistics and calculation of the number of 5G base stations by the Prospect Industry Research Institute combined with the public information research, the number of 5G macro stations and 5G small stations are expected to be 4.8 million stations and 9.6 million stations, respectively. The base station antenna investment scale is calculated as follows: each 5G macro station needs to configure 3 pairs of antennas, each pair of macro station antenna price to 3000 yuan; each small station needs to configure an average of 2 pairs of antennas, each pair of antenna price of small station antenna to 1000 yuan, then the total investment scale of the antenna of the 5G base station reaches 62.4 billion yuan. Foresight Industry Research Institute expects that in 2023, China's 5G base station antenna investment total scale peaked at 11.1 billion yuan.
Note: The 2020 and 2021 data include the scale of 4G macro base station antennas, and each 4G macro base station only needs to be configured with 1 pair of antennas.
Reference information: on June 25, 2021, commissioned by China Radio and Television, China Mobile launched a multi-frequency band (including 700M) antenna product bidding. Bidding announcement shows that the tender *** involves three types of antenna collection products totaling 6 models: package 1 is mainly "4+4+4" 700/900/1800 independent ESC antenna (high gain), demand for 600,000 faces; package 2 is mainly "4+4+4+8" 700/900/1800 independent ESC antenna (high gain), the demand for 600,000 faces; package 2 is mainly "4+4+4+8 " 700/900/1800/FA independent ESC smart antenna (short), demand for 1.14 million faces.
Although the 5G network architecture is much more complex than 4G, the total number of base stations increases, and the complexity of the service also increases, but the trend of centralization and intelligence is obvious. Therefore, the network planning and operation and maintenance costs in the 5G era may not have a significant increase, is expected to be basically the same as in the 4G era. 4G period of network planning and operation and maintenance investment scale of about 134.2 billion yuan, measured by an increase of about 11%, the network planning and operation and maintenance investment scale of about 150 billion yuan in the 5G period.
Network planning and operation and maintenance in the early 5G network construction and network construction will benefit after the completion of the pre-network planning stage, the investment window for 2020-2023; later for the network operation and maintenance stage, the investment window for 2024-2027.