China’s 5G Industry Chain to Enter Commercial Use by End of 2018

The China IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group held a press conference to review the third stage of 5G technology the research and development in Beijing. It said the main links of China’s 5G industry chain will reach pre-commercial levels by the end of 2018.

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China launched the third-phase of 5G technology research and development experiment in 2018. Ku Wen, director of information and communication development at the China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. He said in the conference that the third stage was key to commercializing 5G and its standard would be particularly important.

Ku said he expects major 5G industry chain links will enter basic commercial use by the end of 2018. This test can promote 5G to develop faster and lay a foundation for 5G large scale tests and commercialization.

Tests should conform to international standards and accelerate the development of pre-commercial equipment, Ku said. We should give full play to 5G test platform and accelerate the construction and completion of the industrial chain, he said. Ku called for the promotion of business applications.

Huang Yuhong, vice president of China Mobile Research Institute, said there will be 26 third-stage scenario tests at 500 bases in five cities. And the business model will be tested at 500 bases in 12 cities. The industry is expected to launch commercially-oriented terminal chips in the second quarter of 2019. And will launch 5G pre-commercial applications in the third quarter.

Ma Hongbing, deputy general manager of network construction at China Unicom, said China Unicom has applied to MIIT for testing in seven cities, completed field construction in Shanghai and Shenzhen and finished laboratory and field testing of 5G mobile phones provided by Huawei, ZTE and Nokia.

Shen Shaoai, deputy general manager of technology department, China Telecom, said China Telecom will continue to support the 5G third-phase test, and will jointly promote commercial use of 5G. China Telecom said it would conduct 5G business trials in 2019.