A staff member demonstrates remote music teaching supported by 5G and 4K technologies at the Light of the Internet Expo Center in Wuzhen, east China's Zhejiang Province, Oct. 19, 2019. (Xinhua/Xu Yu)

The number of 5G base stations in China is expected to hit 130,000 by the end of this year, Chen Zhaoxiong, vice minister of China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the recent PT Expo China held in Beijing.

“China will accelerate 5G deployment, and strive to build a full-coverage, advanced, high-quality and effective 5G network,” said Chen.

According to Yang Jie, president of China Mobile, the company will launch the 5G network in over 50 cities this year. It will be available in all cities at prefecture level and above starting from 2020.

China Mobile’s competitor China Unicom and China Telecom will co-build and share 5G network access nationwide to save costs and improve efficiency. So far, they have installed shared 5G base stations in 24 provinces and municipalities. According to the latest test data, the peak rate of these stations reached 2.5 Gpbs, the highest in the world so far.

Besides the carriers, upper- and lower-stream industries are also working at full speed to promote 5G construction.

By the end of September 2019, Chinese communication company ZTE had signed 35 commercial 5G contracts globally, and conducted in-depth cooperation in regards to the technology with over 60 carriers.

In the first nine months of this year, ZTE invested a total of 9.4 billion yuan ($1.33 billion) in R&D, accounting for 14.6 percent of its revenue, in an attempt to build its core competitiveness in the 5G era.

During the expo, Chen noted that 5G will not only bring whole new experiences to public users, but will also contribute new ideas to government and enterprise customers. He stressed that China would accelerate the innovative application of the technology in industry, transportation, energy and agriculture, explore new models, new products and new businesses, and promote high-quality development of the digital economy.

Statistics indicate that the compound growth of 5G+ industrial internet would reach 464 percent between 2022 and 2026. Meanwhile, industries and industrial internet will become a major field of application of 5G and in turn, spur the development of 5G. It is estimated that the industrial internet will account for 80 percent of 5G revenue.