Its coming to China: 5G

After a long time, the era of 5G has finally reached China! Commercial 5G licenses have been released to the country’s telecommunications network operators and its cable network. The carriers include China Mobile, China Unicom, China Telecom and China Broadcasting Network. You may ask, “What is the significant difference between 5G and 4G? According to Li T., a senior technology reporter based in Shenzhen, “5G is the next generation of ultra-fast wireless technology, offering faster data rates, reduced latency, energy savings, cost reductions, higher system capacity and massive device connectivity.”

A considerable downfall for customers in the market is that 5G has only been released for certain phone brands such as Huawei and Android while other brands such as Apple are required to wait due to the fact that they are a foreign brand. Apple has decided to wait until at least 2020 until it releases 5G-enabled iPhones. 4G is still expected to continue functioning even after the 5G release in smartphones. Controversially, multiple smartphone devices supporting 5G were issued before the release of the 5G network as it will officially start functioning until October of 2019.

The reason as to why China is excited for the release of their 5G is because of national pride, and the satisfaction of knowing that they are one of the leading countries in wireless technology development on a global scale. This also transforms the image of their country in a beneficial way as it is not creating a copy out of another country’s product, but instead, it is developing its own new innovative wireless technology.

China is advancing rapidly in their technology research, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, they are already working on their 6G which they plan to release by 2030.