CHINA MAINTAINS 5G LEADERSHIP ROLE IN THE FACE OF COVID-19
Mobile operators in China launched commercial 5G services last year and are leading the way in diversifying their offerings for both consumer and enterprise customers. The 2020 China edition of the GSMA’s ‘Mobile Economy’ series, published today, forecasts that 5G will account for almost half of the country’s mobile connections by 20251, representing an adoption rate on a par with other leading 5G markets such as Japan, South Korea and the US. Chinese operator investment forecasts are more than $180 billion over the next five years in mobile CAPEX, roughly 90 per cent of which will be on 5G networks. “China is leading early adoption in 5G and has already built more than 160,000 5G base stations covering more than 50 cities as operators aim to expand standalone 5G network coverage and capacity,” said Sihan Bo Chen, Head of Greater China, GSMA. “Unlocking the benefits of these next-generation networks, flexible policies, including for spectrum and infrastructure, are strategically important to support China’s ongoing transformation into a fully-fledged digital economy.” Checkout? Telenor celebrates 15 years of empowering Pakistan with successful 5G trials The ‘Mobile Economy China 2020’ report features the latest GSMA Intelligence data on the state of mobile in China, including forecasts out to 2025, plus analysis of the industry’s social and economic impact, and the findings from GSMA Intelligence’s consumer and enterprise surveys. The report can be downloaded here in English or Chinese (infographics). Other related GSMA reports published this week include: ‘Impacts of mmWave 5G in China’ The assignment of 5G mmWave spectrum2 will be crucial to providing the increased bandwidth and capacity that high-performance 5G applications require; the report forecasts that mmWave 5G could contribute $104 billion to China’s GDP by 2034. It, therefore, calls on regulators to assign large, contiguous blocks of mmWave spectrum to operators to support data-intensive 5G applications and new use cases. Given the significance of manufacturing in China’s economy, industrial applications leveraging mmWave 5G present a great opportunity for China to drive economic growth. Download the report here in Chinese or English. ‘5G use cases for verticals China 2020’ – in collaboration with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) This report comprises 15 case studies of 5G-powered applications for verticals, including industrial manufacturing, transportation, healthcare, education, content and more. These deployments serve to demonstrate the 5G opportunity for vertical customers in China and elsewhere. Contributing companies include China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom, Datang Mobile, Ericsson, Haier, Huawei, Migu, Nokia Shanghai Bell and ZTE, among others.
