On June 27th at noon, during MWC Shanghai 2024, an insider from China Broadcasting Network (CBN) disclosed to Sina Technology that the 5G NR broadcast of CBN will be officially commercialized next year, enabling users to watch TV without consuming data traffic.
5G NR broadcast, simply put, is to transmit radio and television signals through broadcasting and television transmitting towers and mobile cellular base stations, allowing TV programs that could only be watched on TVs before to be watched on 5G terminals.
In June 2019, CBN, along with the original three major operators, obtained 5G commercial licenses, but how to differentiate and compete with the three major operators has become the key. In fact, as early as 2020, Zeng Qingjun, the deputy general manager of CBN, had predicted that the breakthrough of CBN is 5G NR broadcast, which will enable all 5G terminals to receive digital TV broadcast in the 5G way without worrying about data traffic and network congestion.
And after years of layout, CBN is about to迎来 critical progress in 5G NR broadcast.
An insider from CBN said that 5G NR broadcast has begun to deploy equipment and is in the testing stage, striving to be officially commercialized next year. Currently, CBN is jointly promoting with equipment manufacturers such as Huawei and ZTE, mobile phone manufacturers such as vivo and OPPO, and mobile phone chip manufacturers such as Hisilicon and MediaTek. It can realize radio and television services without changing the existing core network, base stations, and mobile phone terminal hardware, without the need for special hardware support, especially the mobile phone chip, only needing a new driver, which can significantly reduce the cost and difficulty of industrial promotion.
In terms of coverage, it is mainly covered by the coordination of broadcasting and television transmitting towers and mobile cellular base stations. On the one hand, using the existing broadcasting and television transmitting towers to achieve 5G high-tower high-power wide-area coverage; on the other hand, using 5G cellular base stations to achieve in-depth and continuous coverage in indoor and in-car.
It is worth noting that 5G NR broadcast has achieved a no SIM card mode and cross-operator service. That is, when the 5G NR broadcast is officially commercialized, it can watch TV without data traffic, and users of CBN and the other three major operators can use it.
Data shows that by the end of 2023, CBN's 5G users have exceeded 23 million. As a brand new telecommunications operator, CBN's 5G user growth rate is very fast, but there is still a huge gap in the overall scale compared to the other three major operators. Whether the upcoming 5G NR broadcast that is about to be officially commercialized can become the killer application of CBN remains to be seen.