On the afternoon of August 4, Wu Hequan, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and director of the Advisory Committee of the Internet Society of China, delivered a keynote speech at the 2022 Beijing News Shell Financial Summer Summit "How far is the next step? From our generation of Internet" digital technology theme forum.
He pointed out that China's Internet industry has entered a period of transformation, and Internet companies have bid farewell to the stage of barbaric growth. He hopes that Internet companies can have a correct understanding of governance, and also believes that the state will conduct long-term and stable supervision to make the development of China's Internet industry more standardized and orderly. Web3.0 is more of an evolved version of web2.0 and cannot yet assume the heavy responsibility of the next generation of Internet. The Metaverse is still a niche market, and its prospects are not clear enough to become the next generation of the Internet.
Excerpts from the speech are as follows:
1. The Internet industry faces multiple challenges during its transformation period, but there are still good opportunities.
The first challenge faced by the Internet industry during its transformation period is the uncertainty of economic development. We face uncertain risks such as new coronavirus variants, conflicts between Russia and Ukraine, inflation in the United States and Europe, and global anti-globalization. China is also facing the uncertainty pressure of shrinking domestic demand, supply shocks, and weakening expectations. Of course, China also has certain goals. Low carbonization, greening and cleanliness are China’s goals. We also need to achieve "dual circulation" and common prosperity. While these are deterministic goals, the development path should be uncertain.
The main economic data in the first half of this year were affected by the epidemic, and the growth rate was lower than expected. However, economic indicators related to digitalization are still quite eye-catching and are still growing against the trend. Shannon, the founder of information theory, said that information is used to reduce random uncertainty, and the value of information lies in the increase of certainty. Through digitalization, data can be obtained and analyzed, which can greatly eliminate various information asymmetries. Optimize resource allocation, improve agility in responding to positive changes in industrial and supply chains, and enhance flexibility in the face of uncertainty.
What challenges do we still face during the transformation period? Chinese Internet companies have bid farewell to the barbaric growth stage. The Chinese government has always maintained a cautious and tolerant attitude towards the management of the Internet, creating opportunities for the development of the Internet. However, this also leaves room for the wild growth of the Internet. Cases of using large platform monopolies to suppress peers and abusing algorithms occur from time to time. Infringing privacy and harming consumer interests are destructive market behaviors on the Internet, so Internet governance is very necessary. The Internet regulatory and governance measures introduced by the country last year were unprecedented. Internet companies once did not understand supervision well enough, indicating that their development expectations have weakened and they are confused about their development paths. Major internet companies have slowed down and shifted strategies. This situation cannot be said to be entirely caused by governance, but there are also some governance factors. Some Internet companies don’t know much about governance. We hope that Internet companies have a correct understanding of governance, and we also believe that national supervision is long-term and stable. We hope that through supervision, our Internet industry can develop in a more standardized and orderly manner.
Another challenge faced during the transformation period is that the number of Internet users is basically saturated. The current Internet penetration rate has reached 70%. The average time users spend online every week is 4 hours a day, which is close to the upper limit. Therefore, it is no longer easy to rely on the number of users to drive the growth of the Internet. But we still have good opportunities during the transformation period. The Internet began to enter commercial use in the 1990s, and China successfully connected to the Internet at that time. During this period, a number of Internet companies were born. With the application of mobile communications, especially 4G, we have entered the era of mobile Internet more deeply. Of course, new technologies such as cloud computing, blockchain, big data, Internet of Things, and artificial intelligence have also been proposed. Now with the commercial use of 5G, we have further promoted the arrival of the industrial Internet era. It can be said that we have created the Industrial Internet, the Internet of Faith, and the Internet of Value.
2. IPv6 has become the general trend, and the industrial Internet integrates IT and OT
In addition to what we call 5G, we can also see that the Internet has gradually evolved from the earliest IPv4 standard to the IPv6 standard. Although the IPv6 standard appeared in 1996, it is not until now that the world has truly entered the IPv6 era. As of May this year, the number of active IPv6 users in my country has reached nearly 710 million, accounting for 67.12% of all Internet users in my country.
The development of IPv6 shows three major trends. First, the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 is accelerating. As mentioned before, our number of active users has reached 67%, and IPv6 traffic has accounted for 10.8% of metropolitan area network traffic and 40.8% of LTE mobile network traffic. Another feature is the evolution from IPv4 and IPv6 dual stack to IPv6 single stack. The United States even proposed that IPv6 single stack is the only choice for future network innovation and development.
Another trend is the development from IPv6 to IPv6+. The motivation for adopting IPv6 is not only to supplement the shortage of addresses, but also to exploit the spatial capabilities and innovation potential of IPv6 addresses. It can be said that IPv6 is application-aware because it has many addresses that can be used to transmit channel requirements. From the IP address, we can know what the bandwidth, time, and jitter requirements of our channel are, without having to go to the application layer. Explain the business.
Another feature of the second half of the Internet is the industrial Internet where IT and OT merge. In the Industrial Internet, we have traditional industrial control equipment. We control production equipment and instruments according to prescribed procedures, and of course we also collect the data they reflect. Now that 5G is here, we have 5G industrial modules, which also play the same role. With For Fieldbus, we added support such as edge computing to further analyze the data and send it to the shop floor. We have also added support for cloud machine interfaces and monitoring data collection and monitoring systems to further collect data and model it, and then send it to the factory level. The first layer has various risk control software and cloud computing support. We turn the solution into an APP that can be promoted and used.
Of course, we also have the external network, which is the public Internet. It is specifically mentioned here that the industrial Internet is now facing the 5G era. The 5G industrial module is not just an industrial module, it is actually an Internet of Things module. By adding some next-generation technology features, 5G network modules transform into a new type of industrial network management. New industrial network management not only integrates new generation technologies, but also integrates IT and OT well to promote the flattening and IP-based factories. ization and intelligence.
3. China is about to enter the "double gigabit" era, and the era of computing power has become an important feature
Another feature of the second half of the Internet is that China is about to enter the "double gigabit" era. As of June this year, China's 5G users accounted for 27.3% of all mobile users and 60% of global 5G users. Each user now uses more than 14 GB per month. The average download speed of the fixed network is close to more than 50MB, close to 60MB. Download speeds on mobile networks are also close to 60MB. There isn't much difference between the two. In my country, 100M optical fiber broadband access accounts for 93.7% of broadband users, and Gigabit access users also account for 10.9%.
In the first quarter of this year, the average downlink speed of 5G was /s and that of 4G was /s. Obviously 5G is already 8 times that of 4G, and the uplink speed of 5G is also 3.5 times that of 4G. Some of our current users still don't feel it. what is the reason? Because downloading using 5G may take 0.1 seconds, and downloading using 4G may take 1 second. For general applications, users cannot feel the difference between 1 second and 0.1 second. But if it is for applications such as driverless driving and telemedicine, it is very important. The key is that, including future applications such as VR, this difference is obvious, but these other application ecosystems have not yet been established, so ordinary people may not feel it is so obvious.
What is another characteristic of the second half of the Internet? This is the age of computing power. In May last year, the country officially implemented the “Eastern and Western Accounting” project. It is expected that during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period, my country's computing power will increase by 20%, some say 30%, which will increase by about 400 billion yuan every year. invest. In 2021, the United States accounts for 31% of the global computing power, China accounts for 27%, Japan accounts for about 5%, Germany 10%, and the United Kingdom 3%. China ranks second in the world. Today, artificial intelligence computing requires the use of computing power, but it does not mean that every enterprise must build its own computing power system. We can have many companies as commercial consumers of computing power networks, and computing power networks still exist in society. Business providers, the two are integrated through the trading platform of the computing power network, and the management of the artificial intelligence platform can be directly linked to the edge of the cloud network through the control plane of the computing power network.
What does the computing power industry include? Including supercomputing, data centers, computing centers, and most commonly Internet data centers. In total, the scale of our country's computing industry will reach 2 trillion in 2020, and the total economic volume directly and indirectly driven will be 1.7 trillion and 6.3 trillion respectively. Therefore, the era of computing power is also an important feature of the second half of our Internet.
4. Web3.0 cannot shoulder the important task of becoming the next generation Internet.
Let’s talk about our ideas for the next generation of the internet. Can web3.0 become mainstream? Now web3.0 has become one of the top ten hot words recently. We say web1.0 is the PC Internet. At that time, it was mainly portal-centric. Using a web browser, users can obtain content from the Internet in one direction. The main applications include browsing and searching. Generally speaking, users passively accept it. Web2.0 is the mobile Internet. At this time, the online platform has become the center and dominant player. Such platforms include Tencent, Douyin, etc., and their main basic technologies are mobile communications and offline networks. The user now interacts in both directions. We can use Weibo podcasts or community discussions to participate in the creation, dissemination and sharing of online information products. Main applications include e-commerce, mobile payment, WeChat, Douyin, etc. What is the problem? Platform monopoly. Users have submitted some works online, and it is difficult to protect their rights and interests.
Now web3.0 is also called the Internet of Value. It is actually decentralized, or it can be said that there is a center, but this center is user-centered. The main supporting technologies are blockchain, digital identity authentication, and digital currency. Compared with web2.0, users have transmission confirmation and value reflection for the online works they submit. Now, if I draw a painting online, fine, I put it online, but it's hard to prove that you're the owner, and it's easy to be pirated and taken away, which means it has no value to the user. . In the Web 3.0 era, we can use blockchain, digital watermarks, etc. to ensure that the online works you submit have certain ownership and cannot be taken away by anyone. It can also be auctioned online, which is equivalent to digital collectibles. This kind of application actually existed before the term web3.0 appeared, such as podcasts, games, etc., which require user participation. Users also need to earn some gaming equipment through games. They have some virtual value, but in reality they are very small. In the future, web3.0 can have digital collections, which are called non- or non-token abroad. We can realize the correlation between digital assets and physical assets through web3.0. What's the problem here? Blockchain has costs.
In addition, we say that every user is the center and all users are anonymous, which is a difficult problem for community supervision. There are also financial risks brought about by complete decentralization, which is also a challenge to governance. We have indeed experienced web1.0 and web2.0, but will web3.0 definitely become the mainstream in the future? My point is that Web 3.0 is an improvement on Web 2.0. Provide confirmation of rights for works created online by users, and realize the sharing of benefits between the platform and users. This is the positive side of it. However, compared to the total number of Internet users, the proportion of bloggers who really want to publish their works online is very small. Although there are many gamers, not all gamers need to use blockchain to exchange some chips and some chips obtained from games. The device must consider identity authentication, because these require costs, so web3.0 is not strictly required, at least it will not be popularized by the public, while web1.0 and web2.0 are for the public. Therefore, in my opinion, web3.0 can only be said to be an evolved version of web2.0 and cannot shoulder the important task of becoming the next generation of the Internet.
5. Recent technological progress cannot meet the requirements of the Metaverse, and the prospects of the Metaverse are not clear enough.
Another issue is the metaverse. Metaverse is so popular right now that it's simply impossible not to talk about it. We know that digital twins actually map real events into an online virtual world. Metaverse is the opposite. It is a virtual space extended according to people's imagination. how? Loaded into real space, it blurs the line between simulation and reality. The metaverse in a narrow sense is based on VR, AR, and MR technologies, integrating user avatars, content production, social networking, online games, virtual currency payment and other online spaces. Although the term Metaverse is very new, its technology is actually the fusion of modern information technology, involving 5G, IP network, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, virtual reality, blockchain, digital currency, Internet of Things, human-computer interaction, etc. etc., but it has higher requirements for these technologies, so in that sense, these technologies are actually unlikely to meet the needs of the Metaverse within a few years.
The Metaverse requires higher bandwidth. 5G can also support VR, AR and other scenarios, but 5G will not support these high-end applications involving virtual reality, augmented reality, mixed reality, holographic images and future sensory interconnection. In the future, Metaverse may have thousands of concurrencies, and the user throughput may reach TB, definitely 6G. Although 6G can basically support you, what bandwidth will other users use? I can't give you all the bandwidth, right?
Furthermore, the future of the Metaverse is far from clear. Metaverse is mainly consumer-oriented applications, such as cultural tourism, high-speed rail, games, sensory interaction, etc. In the future, we can also talk about industrial applications, including digital creativity, virtual office space, etc. Metaverse’s business model is closely related to the current social media VR, AR has not changed fundamentally, so Metaverse is still a niche market. I spend so much bandwidth just playing games. That’s certainly not the case for everyone, so my question is, thoughts on the next generation of the internet: will the Metaverse lead the way? My point is, no, the Metaverse will evolve in the future, but it won't replace it. It is certainly not true that our next generation internet will be primarily a metaverse.
6. The three laws of communication technology still hold true, and the Internet is still the leading force in the digital economy.
It has to be said that the Internet is still the dominant force in the digital economy. There are three laws of communication technology. The first is Moore's Law. Chip performance doubles every 18 to 24 months. This growth rate has not shown a significant decline at present, although some people say that Moore's Law is difficult to maintain and will reach the post-Moore era. But continued innovation in technology should also make Moore’s Law ubiquitous. The existence of Moore's Law actually drives high innovation and growth in the digital economy.
The second law is Medcalf's Law, which states that the value of a network is proportional to the square of the number of users it connects to. The more users we have, the greater the value of the network, which is reflected in the high penetration rate of the network economy.
There is also a law called Gilder's law, which stipulates that in the next 25 years, the bandwidth of the backbone network will double every six months. This actually reflects a significant decline in the marginal cost of the digital economy, and therefore the broad reach of the digital economy. Since bandwidth is cheaper, we can cover a wider area. Therefore, we summarize the digital economy as being highly innovative, long-penetrating, and wide-covering.
China is the most populous country in the world and has the highest broadband penetration rate in the world. As I said just now, the penetration rate of broadband above 100M is 93.7%, covering all towns and villages. 5G now also covers all towns and villages. Of course, further deepening is needed. . The average download speed of China's fixed-line broadband ranks ninth in the world, and the download speed of mobile network ranks seventh in the world, which is better than that of the United States. So China has such good network bandwidth. Even if our company's own network is very poor, our company actually does not need to build its own intranet and can use the public network, thereby reducing the cost of enterprise transformation. Moreover, China has a large population and many users, so the benefits are the greatest. In addition, our country has the largest market, so the development of our country's digital economy can obtain the best returns at the lowest cost in the world. It can be said that the Internet will continue to be the dominant force in China’s digital economy.
Beijing News Shell Finance reporter promised editor Xu Chao to proofread for Li Ming
标签： #Digital Economy #Blockchain #Wu Hequan #Mobile Internet #5g
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