The new infrastructure has entered a new stage of scientific layout

New infrastructure, new policies. Eight departments such as the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the Network Information Office recently jointly issued the Three-year Action Plan for the construction of New Internet of Things Infrastructure (2021-2023), proposing that by the end of 2023, new Internet of Things infrastructure will be initially built in major cities in China, and the foundation of social modernization governance, industrial digital transformation and livelihood consumption upgrading will be more stable.

The executive meeting of The State Council held in September proposed the scientific layout and promotion of the construction of new infrastructure based on information networks and driven by technological innovation during the "14th Five-Year Plan" period. This is not the first time Beijing has emphasized new infrastructure. How is this time different from the past? Why the emphasis on information network as the basis, driven by technological innovation? How to scientific layout? The reporter interviewed the experts concerned.

Highlight the digital economy

Pu Songtao, deputy director of the China Electronic Information Industry Development Research Institute, believes that the concept of "new infrastructure" is not the first time, and can be traced back to the Central Economic Conference in 2018. The executive meeting of The State Council made it clear that the construction of new infrastructure is focused on the field of digital economy, and information infrastructure and integration infrastructure are the infrastructure required for the development of digital economy. In addition, the qualifier "based on information networks and driven by technological innovation" is proposed, which further clarifies the key area of new infrastructure construction for the development of the digital economy.

"The proposed new infrastructure is mainly for the information network, is focused, while in the promotion of more emphasis on the coordinated development of the core network, mobile communication network, because only to achieve the improvement of the overall transmission efficiency of information network, in order to achieve more applications." Zhongnan University of Economics and Law digital economy Research Institute executive dean Pan and Lin said.

"In the post-epidemic era, the connotation of new infrastructure is gradually clear, and China needs to build a new economic engine through new infrastructure." Yang Fan, president of Zhongcheng Think Tank, analyzed that information and communication is a key force to promote informatization, digitalization and intelligence, which can help build a multi-level industrial Internet platform, promote integrated innovation, combine to promote new urbanization, promote the intelligent transformation of transportation, logistics, energy, municipal and other infrastructure, and promote the digitalization level of agriculture. We will build infrastructure for people's livelihood such as telemedicine and online education. The new type of infrastructure based on information networks and driven by technological innovation is not only a new area of investment, but also has a strong driving force and reflects the future development direction.

Yang Fan believes that China's economy is currently in a transition period from high-speed growth to high-quality development, the planning of the new infrastructure focused on considering the comprehensive benefits, reflecting the requirements of high-quality development, the future will focus on promoting the development of artificial intelligence, industrial Internet, Internet of things and other fields, promote manufacturing technology transformation and equipment update, support new services and digital economy, Ensure that the future development path is green, low-carbon, circular and sustainable.

"Taken together, new infrastructure is an important foundation for China's economic development, especially the development of the digital economy, and the deployment and construction of new infrastructure is of great value for adjusting industrial structure, cultivating new momentum for economic development, and promoting industrial transformation and upgrading." Pu Songtao said.

Play a leading role

The executive meeting of The State Council stressed the need to strengthen the construction of information infrastructure. Specifically, promoting the coordinated expansion of the national backbone network and the metropolitan area network, and carrying out the upgrading of gigabit optical network speed. We will promote the commercialization and large-scale application of next-generation mobile communication networks. We will improve space information infrastructure such as satellite communications, navigation and remote sensing. Develop a ubiquitous and collaborative Internet of Things.

Why the emphasis on strengthening information infrastructure? Yang Fan believes that the new generation of mobile communication network is accelerating the integration of industry, agriculture, cultural tourism and other industries, and has a strong, overlapping and doubling effect on the development of thousands of industries. At present, convergence applications are becoming increasingly active, the industrial ecology is steadily growing, and has formed a systematic advantage, and the importance of promoting the commercial large-scale application of a new generation of mobile communication networks is self-evident. In the future, it is necessary to strengthen the supply capacity of a new generation of mobile communication networks, continue to expand the application scale of the industry, improve the typical application ecology of the industry, and prevent network security risks.

The new generation of information technology plays an obvious role in driving economic growth. According to the report released by Inspur Information and IDC, computing power is closely related to economic growth, and the average increase of computing power index by 1 point will increase the digital economy and GDP by 3.3‰ and 1.8‰ respectively. The computing power index is expected to become a key indicator to measure the vitality of economic development in the digital age. The Nanjing Intelligent Computing Center, which was put into operation in July this year, has a computing capacity of 8 trillion times per second, which means that it can complete 10 billion image recognition, 3 million hours of speech translation or 10,000 kilometers of automated driving artificial intelligence data processing tasks in one hour.

Pu Songtao said that in the past, the construction and application of the Internet has played a major role in promoting China's economic development, and cultivated a large number of Internet companies with global influence. Further deployment and promotion of information infrastructure construction will help enhance the driving role of the Internet and information technology in China's economic development.

Pu Songtao pointed out that different from the past Internet construction, in the new infrastructure construction task, more emphasis on "upgrading and expanding", upgrading is to improve the service capacity of the Internet and mobile Internet, and further support the development of Internet and mobile Internet services; Expansion is to expand the deployment of spatial information infrastructure and the Internet of Things on the basis of the previous network infrastructure construction, so as to cultivate new business forms, new models and new industries in these fields.

Emphasis on fusion empowerment

The State Council executive meeting held in September also stressed the need to steadily develop integrated infrastructure, including building a multi-level industrial Internet platform to promote integrated innovation. In combination with the promotion of a new type of urbanization, we will promote the smart transformation of transportation, logistics, energy, municipal and other infrastructure. We will raise the level of digitalization in agriculture. We will build infrastructure for people's livelihood such as telemedicine and online education.

In this regard, experts said that to create the industrial Internet, enhance the digitalization of agriculture, and promote smart cities, etc., is to strengthen the integration of information networks and real industries from multiple dimensions, and empower the real economy through integration to achieve transformation and upgrading.

"As a product of the deep integration of the new generation of information and communication technology and the industrial economy, the industrial Internet integrates key infrastructure, a new industrial ecology and a new application model, reflecting the transformative power of the Internet to expand from the consumer field to the industrial field, and is an important focus for promoting industrial transformation and upgrading and developing the digital economy." Yang Fan said.

The new generation of information and communication technologies is playing an increasingly prominent role in empowering the manufacturing industry. Tang Daosheng, senior executive vice president of Tencent and CEO of Cloud and smart industry business group, said that Tencent continues to promote the integration of digital technology and industrial manufacturing, and help the high-quality development of manufacturing with data elements. For example, in Shanghai Fuchi High-tech, Tencent Industrial Cloud combines optical three-dimensional, transfer learning and other algorithms and cloud computing power to form an artificial intelligence quality inspection program, which compresses the quality inspection that takes 1 minute to complete manually to a few seconds, improves the quality inspection efficiency by 10 times, and can save tens of millions of yuan for customers every year.

Pu Songtao believes that the overall architecture of converged infrastructure can be understood as "information network as the entrance, digital platform as the support, data integration as the core, intelligent application as the key, and light service as the feature", focusing on the development needs of digital economy, digital government and digital society, and its core path lies in the integrated application of information technology. The core purpose is to comprehensively support the transformation of development modes, structural optimization and growth drivers in various fields, emphasizing integration and empowerment.

How does Fusion Empower? Industry experts suggest that incentive mechanisms such as government procurement can be used to stimulate the transformation of traditional industries to digital and intelligent. Pu Songtao said that first, we should pay attention to the integration and innovation of industry knowledge or application needs and information technology, and second, we should pay attention to the construction of infrastructure standards, so that various platforms can effectively interconnect.