Actual, digital companies combine with telecom
China’s remarkable advances in building telecommunications network infrastructure have laid a solid foundation for integrating digital and real economies, according to experts.
The comments came after the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced on Monday that China has built 819,000 5G base stations nationwide, around 70 percent of the global total.
In addition, within just two years of starting commercialization of 5G services, China has 280 million 5G smartphone users in China, which is more than 80 percent of the world’s 5G cellular subscribers.
Wu Jichuan, former head of the former Ministry of Post and Telecommunications, which was in charge of the postal and telecommunications industry from 1954 to 1998, said one of China’s telecommunications industry’s greatest contributions was creating a solid digital infrastructure for businesses and consumers to access fast Internet networks at affordable prices.
The sector laid the foundation for China’s mobile application kaleidoscope and thriving digital economy. More importantly, the players in the sector can help advance the integration of the digital and real economies in the 5G era to bring new vitality to the Chinese economy, Wu said.
According to the Global System for Mobile Communication Association, Chinese cellular users spend an average of $ 5.94 per month on the service, which is below the global average of $ 11.36.
In addition to more affordable services, China has further narrowed the digital urban-rural divide. More than 99 percent of administrative villages in China have access to fiber optic and 4G networks, with rural and urban areas enjoying high-speed internet alike, said Liu Liehong, vice minister of industry and information technology.
Liu cited data from an international speed testing agency showing that China ranked fourth in the world for cellular network speed in March, with fixed broadband speed ranked 16th.
As Chinese telecommunications companies made advances in research and development, they became the leading patent issuers essential to global 5G standards, Liu added.
The latest report by the German patent analysis company IPlytics showed that the Chinese telecommunications supplier Huawei accounted for 15.39 percent of the world’s 5G patent families (collections of patent applications with the same or similar technical content) as of February 1. This was the highest amount in the world. The Chinese telecommunications supplier ZTE took third place with 9.81 percent and the smartphone provider Oppo took ninth place with 3.47 percent.
According to the government’s latest work report, which set out priority tasks for 2021, China will push the development of 5G networks and expand the application to other settings.
Meanwhile, as part of efforts to further stimulate market units, China is aiming to lower average rates for broadband and dedicated internet access services for small and medium-sized businesses by another 10 percent this year.
Denis Depoux, global executive director at Roland Berger, a management consultancy, said one of the difficulties in promoting 5G in businesses is that the specific needs of each company or sector require 5G to be adapted to demonstrate the value of the technology.
Technology meets the real needs of people in different sectors – this is necessary to determine their needs in the context of their business models – so that traditional industries can improve their activities, increase efficiency or reduce costs, Depoux said.
The market consultancy International Data Corp predicted that super-fast 5G technology will be a new engine of the digital economy in the next few years. It has been predicted that China will invest 650 billion yuan ($ 101 billion) in building 5G network infrastructure over the next five years and will have 4.5 million 5G base stations by 2025.
In addition to accelerating the 5G rollout, China is also working hard to narrow the digital divide between urban and rural areas by encouraging telecommunications companies to build base stations and optical networks in relatively poor areas.
Visitors watch a smart robot grab a cube during a high-tech exhibition in Zhengzhou, Henan province on Monday. LIU XU / DAILY FOR CHINA
