China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology held a commercial launch ceremony for 5G with three major operators at the 2019 China international information and communications exhibition on Oct 31. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom officially announced the 5G package and launched it on November 1.
As many as 50 cities, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen, are in the first batch of cities to launch 5G, and the three operators have more than 10 million commercial pre-booking users.
While U.S. and South Korean carriers have been offering 5G services for months, China is expected to catch up in the coming weeks, the Wall Street journal reported. China has made 5G a national priority, removing red tape and cutting costs so that the three major operators can roll out the new technology as soon as possible.
China has opened more than 80,000 5G base stations and will have about 130,000 by the end of this year, the report said, citing official Chinese data. Bernstein Research predicts that South Korea will be second with 75,000 5G base stations, followed by the US with just 10,000.
Analysts at the company estimate that China will have 120 million 5G users by the end of 2020 and 465 million by the end of 2021.
"5G will actually not really mature until the next year or two," he said. But it's really an opportunity for early adopters." "While some other countries launched 5G services earlier this year, China will have the world's largest commercial 5G network on Friday (Nov. 1), and the size of the network and the price of services will have a key impact on the entire supply chain."
In early April, the us and South Korea rushed to launch the world's first 5G commercial service, and the actual effect was ridiculed by local media and users.
U.S. carriers' 5G networks rely on base stations that use high frequency spectrum. Technically, the high frequency spectrum provides the "fastest Internet speeds", but the physical coverage is limited.
In China and much of the rest of the world, however, 5G development is focused on low - and medium-frequency spectrum because low-frequency base stations can cover a larger area.
According to the report, part of the reason why U.S. operators are focusing on high-frequency spectrum is that the low-frequency spectrum is owned by the U.S. government and military. In recent months, the U.S. government has been trying to sell mid-frequency spectrum to spur greater 5G development.
