As China shifts to a consumer/service based economy, it will need a network infrastructure that will deliver many of the services users will be accessing. With a mobile user base of 1.3 billion and 700 million Internet users, the country is poised to have the largest e-commerce and other related digital services. Mobile will play an integral part of this new economy and the country is going to spend $180 billion over the next seven years to have the largest 5G network infrastructure in the world. Once fully deployed, operators can deliver next generation communications services throughout China.
As reported on the South China Morning Post by Bien Perez, the $180 billion investment will eclipse the $117 billion investment in 4G from 2013 to 2020. It will also surpass what Japan is spending on its 5G network, which comes out to $46 billion over the same seven-year mobile technology cycle.
This massive investment will lay the groundwork for a network infrastructure that will deliver next-generation communication services such as reliable super wireless broadband, the Internet of Things (IoT), virtual reality, augmented reality, real-time services, big data, 4K and 8K video and more.
Perez quoted Jefferies Equity analyst Edison Lee, who said, “The impact of 5G on innovative consumer and business services on the mainland will be significant, as all three telecommunications network operators will likely build out aggressively from 2019.”
Those three operators are China Mobile, China Unicom (News - Alert) and China Telecom, which together have more than one billion subscribers. While all three companies will have 5G networks, China Mobile (the largest operator) announced it is going to start building and trialing 5G networks in major mainland cities throughout the country beginning next year, with the eventual goal of launching full commercial 5G service by 2020. The service is going to be deployed in China in the 3.3GHz to 3.6GHz and 4.8GHz to 5GHz bands.
If all goes according to plan, Lee predicts 39 percent of the total Chinese mobile users nationwide will be on 5G networks by 2022, which is more than 588 million people.
When it comes to numbers, China has some staggering statistics. And 5G is going to be the technology that will be able to cope with the Chinese user base. According to the IMT 2020 standard for 5G technologies, the specs will support a peak data download rate of up to 20 gigabits per second; 1 millisecond latency; and one million connected devices per square kilometer. With these features, users can access next generation communications services at all times for personal and professional use.
Edited by Alicia Young