China Unicom and China Telecom have launched 5G services across 50 cities in the country including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Huawei, blacklisted by the US, reportedly played a major role in China’s 5G rollout. The launch of the network was initially planned for next year but got pulled ahead of schedule by the state-owned carriers.
5G networks have rolled out in several parts of the western world, but China’s roll-out of the technology on Friday is reportedly the world’s largest (yet).
Prices of 5G plans by all three state-run telecom operators start at around $18 / month (30GB /500 call minutes) and scale up to $85 / month (300GB / 3,000 call minutes), which some experts say are potentially still too high for widescale adoption, given China’s per-capita income.
Reportedly, download speeds will also vary according to data plans. Subscribers of entry-level packages will get 300Mbps download speeds while higher-end plans will fetch data at 1Gbps.
Huawei has supplied the largest amount of network equipment for China’s 5G rollout and has been in talks with various other countries to help with their 5G networks.
However, the US has blacklisted the company, arguing it poses a national security risk and has lobbied allies to shun Huawei from their 5G networks.
Huawei denies this, and many in China see the US actions as part of its efforts to curb the rise of the world’s second largest economy.
One of several key challenges facing 5G’s adoption in China, or anywhere else for that matter, is convincing people of the need to shift towards the faster, but more expensive network, along with providing plenty of options to buy in terms of the currently lacking 5G smartphone market.
Huawei, Xiaomi, ZTE, Vivo and Samsung currently have 5G-capable handsets in the country, but would need to introduce more affordable models to further penetrate the market. According to Chinese reports, the country had nearly 10 million registered 5G users as of October this year and analysts predict that figure will balloon to 110 million by 2020.
