On November 19, 2019, at the Global Optical Fiber and Cable Conference, Gao Junshi, director of the cable research institute of China Mobile communications group, released the "new normal" theme report of optical fiber and cable market. He introduced that China Mobile optical fiber network adopts the method of layered construction and layered use, and has built nearly 20 million kilometers of optical fiber lines. 5G will not bring the same scale of demand as 4G and FTTH, but existing fiber-optic facilities need to improve maintenance efficiency through fiber-optic technology innovation.
In the network layers of access layer, urban backbone/transmission layer, provincial backbone/transmission layer and inter-provincial backbone/transmission layer, access network is used for business/customers (base stations, customers and collectors) and gathering machine rooms, and its optical cable accounts for 85% of the total length and 75% of the total investment of optical cable. The length of backbone optical cable in urban area accounted for 12%, and the length of backbone optical cable in provincial and interprovincial areas accounted for 3%.
The access layer network, relying on the integrated service access area, is further divided into micro-grids for network, so that every street is deployed with China Mobile's optical cable. At present, more than 500 million households have been pre-covered, of which nearly 200 million have broadband access and nearly 3 million base stations have been accessed.
In the 5G era, access layer is the focus of 5G networking and will continue to be the leading object of China Mobile's investment. The investment of access layer transmission network will account for more than 80%. Meanwhile, the demand for dense coverage and low-cost network construction makes c-ran became the main networking scene of 5G fronthaul network.
Currently, the three most economical and effective 5G fronthaul schemes are fiber direct drive, passive wave division and semi-active wave division. With c-ran as the main solution for 5G fronthaul network, the demand for optical fiber in the access layer will be greatly increased.
Compared with the FTTH market in the past, 5G requires less fiber and cable, and the demand development will enter a stable period. The demand for optical cable depends on the number of access points in the access layer. After 4G and FTTH peak construction, China has nearly 3 million base stations and home width coverage basically completed, which makes it necessary to build 5G on demand and give priority to covering hot spots. 4G+5G will be a long-term coexistence process.
Therefore, as the demand for fiber optic cable enters a stable period, the fiber optic cable market needs supply-side reform to improve quality and efficiency, and fiber optic cable enterprises should seek development with innovation, such as the continuous development of ultra-low loss fiber, small attenuation consumption, large cross-section g. 654E fiber, and promote the reduction of cost, in order to better cope with 400G/1T transmission application. At the same time, a large number of optical fiber lines laid in the past have many hidden dangers, fault maintenance is difficult, and optical fiber enterprises can be innovative in the perception management technology, using optical fiber sensing technology, Internet of things technology to improve the existing optical fiber line management efficiency. Fiber optic cable enterprises can meet the next cycle of the market only by innovate and change.
