Chen Zhaoxiong, vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of China, announced during the PT Expo China held in Beijing that the country has started to commercialize 5G wireless internet communication technologies, Chinese media outlet The Paperreported on Thursday morning.
Commercial 5G networks are available in 50 cities in China now, including all four tier-one cities Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, tier-two cities such as Nanjing, the capital of Jiangsu province, and even smaller cities such as Yingtan, a city in Central China’s Jiangxi province, according to another Chinese publication National Business Daily.
This comes less than five months after China issued 5G commercial licenses to China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom, and the country’s youngest carrier, China Broadcasting Network Corporation (CBN), in early June. The commercialization of 5G networks will also boost the development of related industries in China, such as smartphones and the autonomous driving industry.
Chen added during the expo that by the end of this year, a total of 130,000 5G base stations will be built across the country and 5G networks in Beijing and Shanghai will be connected too. By the end of September, more than 80,000 base stations had already been built, The Paper reported a week earlier, citing Huang Libin, the spokesman for the ministry.
Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, said during the expo that the company has built shared 5G networks with China Telecom in 24 provincial regions in China.
He added that the peak transmission rate of these 5G networks reach 2.5 gigabits per second (Gbps), the fastest worldwide.
China Mobile has started to offer 5G data packages to its users, priced between RMB 128 (USD 18) per month with a 30GB quota and RMB 598 per month with a 300 GB quota, according to The Paper.
China Unicom and China Telecom are offering similar packages to their users too.