In-depth Analysis of 5G RedCap Competition of the 8th “Bloom Cup” 5G Application Collection Competition: The Key Force Driving the Industry Toward the 5G-A Era

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heliyso

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In-depth Analysis of 5G RedCap Competition of the 8th “Bloom Cup” 5G Application Collection Competition: The Key Force Driving the Industry Toward the 5G-A Era

Background and significance: 5G development enters the deep water, RedCap shoulders the mission of carrying forward and starting back.

The 8th “Bloom Cup” 5G Application Contest 5G RedCap (Reduced Capability) is held in 2024, which is the fifth year of the commercialization of 5G technology, and the industry is at a critical stage of shifting from scale construction to application deepening.As a core technology of medium-speed Internet of Things defined by the 3GPP R17 standard, RedCap is regarded as the industry’s core technology for the evolution of 5G to 5G-Advanced. RedCap, as the core technology of medium-speed IoT defined by the 3GPP R17 standard, fills the gap between 5G eMBB (Enhanced Mobile Broadband) and mMTC (Massive Machine Telecommunication), and is regarded by the industry as an important bridge for the evolution of 5G to 5G-Advanced. The establishment of the Thematic Competition is aimed at accelerating the breakthrough of commercial bottlenecks in RedCap technology and cultivating typical application scenarios that can be replicated and scaled up.

The previous competitions have collected nearly 30,000 5G application cases, and this RedCap competition focuses on medium-speed IoT for the first time, reflecting the shift of China’s 5G development strategy from “wide coverage” to “deep integration”. According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), as of June 2024, the total number of 5G base stations in China exceeded 3.64 million, and the penetration rate of 5G users exceeded 60%, but the penetration rate of industrial applications is still less than 20%.The promotion of RedCap technology is expected to solve the pain points of high cost and high power consumption of the traditional 5G terminals, and to provide the best price-performance solutions for the fields of industrial wireless sensing, video surveillance and wearable devices.

Second, technical features and breakthroughs: how RedCap reconfigures the medium-speed IoT market landscape

1. Key technological breakthroughs

By streamlining the number of antennas (the receiving link is reduced to 1-2), supporting half-duplex mode, and reducing the modulation order, RedCap realizes a 60% reduction in terminal complexity, module cost control in the range of $100-200, and power consumption reduction of more than 50% compared with traditional 5G terminals. The RedCap module demonstrated by several enterprises in the feature race has been realized:

2. Chip-level innovation

Vendors such as UV Spreadtrum and Avantech launched chip platforms optimized for RedCap, integrating lightweight 5G baseband and AI acceleration engine, and achieving performance balance through hardware tailoring + software definition while maintaining R15 protocol compatibility. Smart meters, UAV mapping devices and other solutions emerging from the competition have realized a 40% reduction in chip cost compared to traditional 5G solutions.

Tournament Highlights: 300+ Cases Reveal RedCap Application Mapping

A total of 327 valid cases have been solicited for this year’s thematic competition, covering ten major fields such as industry, energy, transportation, etc., in which the representative innovative directions include:

1. Industrial Internet scenarios (32%)
2. Video surveillance field (28%)
3. Telematics applications (18%)

Fourth, the construction of industrial ecology: cross-field collaboration as a key driving force

1. Progress on standards synergies

During the special competition, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CICT) and the industry released the 5G RedCap Industry Application White Paper 2.0, which clarifies the terminal technology requirements of 13 key industries. At the same time, it promoted the integration of RedCap with existing protocols in the industry, such as docking with the Industrial Internet Identification and Resolution System (IIRS) to realize the “one item, one code” full life cycle management.

2. A well-developed test and validation system

Three national RedCap test and verification centers were built to provide an end-to-end test environment. The Beijing lab focuses on verifying the reliability of industrial control scenarios, the Shanghai lab focuses on video transmission quality assessment, and the Shenzhen lab focuses on terminal power consumption optimization. We have completed interoperability testing for more than 200 devices, and have pushed down the average power consumption of the modules by another 15%.

3. Business model innovation

V. Commercial-scale challenges and response strategies

Despite the remarkable results of the event, the review identified three core challenges:

1. Cost pressures remain

The current RedCap module price (~$150) is still more than 3 times that of 4G Cat.1 (~$40). The competition has created a “Scale-up Award” to incentivize companies to innovate cost-optimization solutions, such as:

2. Inadequate network coverage

The opening rate of RedCap base stations nationwide is less than 30%. The organizing committee of the event and the operators have formulated a “three-year coverage plan”, prioritizing the deployment in industrial parks, ports and other scenarios, and it is expected that continuous coverage will be achieved in 2026 in counties and cities across the country.

3. High complexity of industry adaptation

Different industries have different requirements for rate and delay. The competition established the “Industry Integration Innovation Award” and encouraged the development of configurable RedCap terminal platforms, such as Huawei’s “5G Industrial Control Module 2.0”, which supports the adaptive conversion of 22 industrial protocols.

VI. International comparisons and development paths with Chinese characteristics

Globally, China has developed a comparative advantage in RedCap application exploration:

This advantage stems from the government-enterprise collaboration of China’s unique model: the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology through the “Bloom Cup” to build an innovation platform, operators to invest tens of billions of dollars to subsidize the module, local governments to open up the application scenarios, the formation of “technology-market-capital” closed loop.

VII. Future outlook: the leap from thematic competitions to trillion-dollar markets

Based on the results of this year’s event, it is foreseeable that RedCap technology will develop along three main lines:

1. Technology evolutionary path
2. Market growth expectations

According to the forecast of the competition organizing committee, the number of RedCap connections in China will exceed 10 million in 2025, driving the scale of related industries to reach 120 billion yuan. Industrial Internet, Telematics, and Energy & Power will become the three main markets, accounting for more than 70% of the total.

3. Ecological construction directions

Conclusion: The historic mission of the Bloom Cup as a catalyst for innovation

The success of the 8th Bloom Cup 5G RedCap Competition has not only selected a number of excellent application cases, but also built a closed-loop ecology of “standard development, technology verification and commercial promotion”. This model of promoting construction through competition is an important methodology for China to maintain global leadership in 5G applications. With the large-scale replication of the award-winning projects around the world, RedCap technology is expected to become a new engine to promote the deep integration of the digital economy and the real economy, laying a solid foundation for the evolution of 5G to 5G-A.