Started in 2013, the research aims to complete 5G’s first version by 2018 as the Chinese government hopes for the technology to be commercially available through local telecom service providers after two years.
“China has always attached great importance to participating in the formulation of international standards, and will hopefully play a leading and central role in making 5G standards,” said You Xiaohu, chief of the Nanjing-based National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory.
At least 380 million of China’s more than 905 million mobile Internet users are using 4G technology. With the 5G technology, You said network speed will increase 1,000 times, giving users the virtual reality experience.
“The purpose of the research and test is to support the formulation of global 5G standards and boost the development of the telecom industry,” Cao Shumin, 5G research and development team chief at the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), told Xinhua news agency.
MIIT chief engineer Zhang Feng also said “China has made progress in the research of some key areas regarding 5G technology.”
In February, Guo Ping, Huawei Technologies board chairman and rotating CEO, told the Mobile World Live at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona that 5G will bring fundamental changes to the lives of the people. This transformation, he said, will create a total available market of about $15 trillion by 2025.
According to Guo, the world will have about 100 billion connections in 2025 with more than half will come from business applications and smart cities.
Guo, however, said there should be careful planning because industries will “demand more capacity from networks.”
“Carriers need to establish software defined architecture, achieve agile operations and develop big data capabilities,” Guo explained.
5G, once available, will be the most dominant force when it comes to the Internet of Things (IoT), allowing faster connections with more devices attached to the network.
“The IoT will require very high reliability networks because you have particular apps such as health care, business, connected cars, you need very high reliable networks to make sure that these connections are 100 percent reliable,” said Sandeep Raina of MYCOM OSI.
