The GSMA boss noted that Chinese carriers are heavily supporting the association’s Open Gateway initiative
SHANGHAI — China is expected to end this year with more than 1 billion connections in the 5G segment, the Head of the GSMA Mats Granryd said during a keynote session at Mobile World Congress Shanghai, taking place this week in the Chinese city.
The executive noted that the growth experienced in the Chinese market in terms of 5G subscriptions was “astonishing,” adding that Chinese carriers are heavily supporting the GSMA’s Open Gateway initiative.
Granryd highlighted that one of the main drivers of revenue growth for Chinese carriers is cloud revenue, with this segment now accounting for nearly 12% of the Chinese telcos’s overall revenues. Cloud revenue across China’s main mobile operators has reached $11 billion in the past three years, the executive said.
Granryd also noted that 5G will continue to contribute to China’s GDP expansion, as this segment is forecast to add $260 billion by 2030, up from $130 billion in 2023.
The GSMA boss noted that this growing contribution of 5G is chiefly due to the expansion of the technology across different verticals in the country such as manufacturing, finance, construction and communications.
He went on to say that China is also driving industry progress on the Open Gateway initiative, which aims to implement standardized open network APIs.
The GSMA’s Open Gateway was initially launched in February 2023 with eight network APIs – SIM Swap API, Quality on Demand API, Device Status API, Number Verification API, Simple Edge Discovery API, One Time Password (SMS) API, Carrier Billing–Check Out API and Device Location API.
In June 2023, Chinese mobile operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom had joined the GSMA Open Gateway initiative.
Regarding the importance of AI in the telecom industry, Granryd stated that Chinese operators are making an impressive progress in the large language model (LLM) field.
LLMs are AI systems capable of understanding and generating human language by processing vast amounts of text data.
“Here in China, we’ve seen incredible progress since LLMs, were released. About 40% of global LLMs are now developed in China, and I know China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom are all working on developing AI models and services that can be sold to enterprises.”
During the event, the GSMA also published an industry call for collaboration between governments and industry to support the full development of 6 GHz for mobile, with the aim of ensuring a spectrum roadmap is delivered for mobile operators.
