5G also projected to have a major impact on the Chinese economy
A new report from China’s Acadaemy of Information and Communications Technology, as detailed by Chinese media outlets including the South China Morning Post, predicts China’s three carriers–China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom–will spend $411 billion on deploying 5G networks in the decade ending in 2030.
According to reports, the government agency expects peak spending to hit in 2023, as well as that the as-yet unstandardized network standard will have broader implications for the Chinese economy, accounting for 3.2% of GDP in 2025.
Reporting on the key takeaways of the report in Business Insider, Rayna Hollander wrote, “Legacy and emerging mobile services and technologies alike will see more adoption due to 5G speeds…[which] will power nascent tech like augmented and virtual reality (VR), connected homes, M2M communications, and large-scale operations of IoT devices.”
Jefferies analyst Edison Lee told the South China Morning Post, “We believe this paper represents the government’s official position on 5G, and its analysis largely explains why China will aggressively support 5G roll-out.”
Telecom industry watcher Xiang Ligang told the China Daily, “The report underestimates the impact of 5G on social economy. It isn’t yet more than five years since 4G was launched, but it has had a huge influence in boosting the development and popularization of mobile payments.”
The latest Ericsson Mobility Report, a publication put out by the Swedish network infrastructure vendor, suggests broad deployments beginning in 2020, followed by 15% population coverage by 2022. The report authors wrote that deployment speed “will depend on the growth of the complete ecosystem,” and will also be impacted by device and spectrum availability.
Working with vendors Ericsson, ZTE, Nokia and Huawei, China Mobile plans to expand its 5G field trials this year with tests in Shanghai and Chengdu, with on trial using a 100 megahertz channel in the 3.4 GHz and 3.6 GHz bands and massive multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) technology using 128 antennas.
ZTE, one of the vendor’s involved in the trial, expects to see revenues from the sale of standardized 5G equipment in 2019, the company’s managing director for 5G solutions, Alex Wang, told reporters during a recent industry event in Japan. “We consider Chinese and Japanese operators as following the more strict 3GPP-based definition, with launches around 2020. Any launch earlier than that is up to the individual operator to define, but we don’t think that’s standard compliant 5G,” Wang said.
