In what would surely come at the top in Telecom record books, an executive from the China Academy for Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) has announced that over 110 million users have signed up for 5G plans within the country. The announcement was made at the “5G Innovation Development Summit Forum” that was held under the theme ‘5G New Infrastructure, Smartly Leading the Future’, at Chongqing, China.
The CAICT executive further SAID that this recent development came at record time — less than an year after Chinese telecom carriers began offering 5G plans to customers and an year after the telecom authority began issuing commercial 5G licenses. China is now the largest 5G market in the world in terms of user base.
Wen Kyu, the official from CAICT, said that 480,000 5G base stations have been built nationwide, which means that China is transforming into a hub for 5G innovation, and is super close to realising its goal of reaching 500,000 5G base stations by the year’s end per the yearly 5G investment plans by the nation’s three biggest telecom.
That’s not all. The country might actually overshoot its goal, and end the year with as much as 600,000 base stations, as it continues to add more than 15,000 stations weekly.
This is also good news for Huawei, which sees 5G as its last hope for a global presence. The company has been outcasted after last year’s U.S. ban, and 5G may be the last thread that connects it to the world outside China, even though the homeland itself provides a great opportunity with as much as 1.6 billion mobile subscribers.
This new announcement will also help China gain an edge over its technological rival-the United States of America, which is still in the process of setting up a refined 5G infrastructure.
Currently, over 385 operators are investing in 5G and global 5G connections are projected to reach more than a billion in 2023.
