We will promote innovative development of information infrastructure from a high starting point

At present, a new round of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation is booming on a global scale, and the new generation of information technology, represented by 5G, artificial intelligence, big data, cloud computing and blockchain, has become the pioneer technology that has penetrated into all areas of economic and social life. In order to effectively promote the large-scale commercial application of the new generation of information technology in the whole society, accelerating the construction of new information infrastructure has become a priority strategic choice for all countries.  During the 14th Five-Year Plan period, on this basis, we should follow the development trend of technological innovation, meet the major needs of economic and social development, continue to promote the evolution and upgrading of information infrastructure, build a high-speed, universal, integrated, interconnected, secure and efficient information infrastructure, and continue to strengthen the leading and supporting role of information infrastructure in economic and social development. Lay a solid foundation for accelerating the construction of a modern economic system.

First, the evolution and upgrading of information infrastructure is accelerating globally

The sudden outbreak of COVID-19 in 2020 has not only brought great disasters, but also promoted the rapid development of the global digital economy. The process of digitization, networking and intelligence of the whole society is accelerating, and human society is gradually entering a new era of perception, interconnection and intelligence of everything, bringing huge opportunities for the development of information infrastructure. It also puts new and higher demands on the capacity of information infrastructure.

(1) Improving network infrastructure capacity is still a long-term development demand. Promoting the evolution of network infrastructure to high-speed, ubiquitous, and space-space integration is still the mainstream of future global development. In terms of mobile communications, the global evolution and upgrading from 4G to 5G networks has accelerated. By the end of March 2021, 154 network operators in 64 countries/regions around the world have begun to provide 5G commercial services, and 5G network coverage has reached 15.62% of the population. In terms of fixed broadband, gigabit fiber upgrades are the focus of development, and 234 operators in 57 countries around the world have released gigabit bandwidth services. In terms of backbone network, ultra-high-speed large-capacity optical network has evolved to 200G/400G transmission. Satellite Internet, low-orbit satellite Internet into the commercial deployment stage, the United States SpaceX triggered a new round of Global competition, its satellites into orbit rapidly increased to 1737, the British government and Indian telecom operator Bharti Global 45% of OneWeb company has reached 218. In terms of iot, the number of LTE-M networks deployed/commercialized globally has reached 51, and more than 100 countries have deployed/commercialized NB-IoT networks. By the end of 2020, there will be 12.6 billion connected iot devices worldwide.

(2) Computing facilities have become the new focus of information infrastructure development. Under the background of the integration of various ICT technologies and the accelerated digital transformation of various industries, the global data volume is ushering in a new round of explosive growth. According to IDC's forecast, the amount of data added worldwide in the next three years will exceed the sum of the past 30 years, and the total global data will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 26% to 142.6 zettabytes by 2024. This makes the demand for data storage, data transmission, and data processing grow exponentially, constantly increasing the demand for computing resources. At the same time, many intelligent applications need to be provided online in real time, such as the real-time interaction between autonomous vehicles and surrounding vehicles, roadside units and signal lights in the Internet of vehicles scenario, and the real-time processing and feedback of the data collected by networked devices such as sensors, AR/VR devices, and radio frequency scanner identifiers in the smart factory scene. This puts forward higher requirements for the ubiquitous supply and timely provision of computing power. In order to adapt to this development trend, a multi-level computing facility system consisting of data centers, supercomputing, cloud computing, edge computing, artificial intelligence computing centers and other facilities is evolving, and the integration and collaboration of computing power at different levels and systems will become a major trend in infrastructure development, and continue to promote the development of cloud network integration, cloud edge integration and computing network integration.

(3) New technology infrastructure is growing at a faster pace. As more and more devices are connected to the network and more and more business processes are digitized and intelligent, people will build more and more complex economic and social systems in the digital world, which requires information infrastructure to provide people with more user-friendly, low cost, superior and reliable performance, timely and convenient access to general information technology tools. In addition to basic network infrastructure and computing infrastructure, new information infrastructure is relying on new technologies to explore and develop more infrastructure forms. For example, many regions such as the European Union have explored the construction model of blockchain infrastructure, and the United States and the United Kingdom have announced the exploration of new infrastructure such as quantum Internet and digital twins. Around the full life cycle of data acquisition to value mining applications, new information infrastructure systems are constantly developing and improving.