On the one hand, China's seven major "new infrastructures", led by 5G infrastructure, are important productive forces for economic recovery and development. According to the China institute of information technology, China's investment in 5G network construction is expected to reach 1.2 trillion Yuan by 2025, which will boost investment in the upstream and downstream of the industrial chain and applications in various industries to more than 3.5 trillion Yuan. According to the economic contribution of 5G industry released by the China institute of information and communications, it is estimated that from 2020 to 2025, China's total economic output indirectly driven by 5G commercial use will be about 24.8 trillion Yuan.
On the other hand, China's 5G construction is in the first tier in the world. China has contributed more than 50 percent of the world's terminal modules, and the country's three major operators have promoted the pilot or commercial use of information solutions for 5G related industries in more than 4,000 organizations. Currently, more than 50 percent of the world's 5G sites are in China, and China's 5G network construction leads the world.
On the whole, the domestic 5G ecology is gradually being built. Although there is financial pressure, it cannot stop the pace of acceleration.
Specifically, according to the data released by the three major operators, more than 150,000 base stations have been opened in China so far. By the end of 2020, it is planned to open more than 550,000 5G base stations. With the addition of broadcasting and television, the construction scale of 5G base stations of four domestic operators will reach 600,000. By that measure, operators have already done about 25% of the work.
By the end of February, China mobile had more than 80,000 5G base stations and 10 million users of 5G plans. China mobile plans to increase the number of 5G base stations to 300,000 by the end of this year, and three days ago started the intensive procurement of equipment for the second phase of the 5G project.
This means that China mobile will account for about half of the domestic market for 5G base stations this year, while China Unicom and China telecom jointly build networks.
According to China Unicom's latest announcement, by February 20, a total of 64,000 5G base stations had been opened. It will quickly reach 250,000 in the third quarter, one quarter ahead of the annual construction target.
One operator told reporters: "the pressure to build the station is even greater this year. The outbreak has had some impact, causing a delay of about two months, but as long as the resources are in place, construction is not a problem. There will be more 5G base stations actually built this year than announced, and the group has asked us to complete the construction of the whole year by the end of June."
Aggressive South Korea, by contrast, has recently upped the ante on 5G. It is reported that on March 5, South Korea decided to increase 5G investment in the first half of 2020 in order to hedge against the impact of the new coronavirus outbreak and revive the declining economy. South Korea's big three operators, which had expected to invest about 2.7 trillion won in the first half of the year, are now increasing their investment to 4 trillion won in the first half of 2020.
