World's Largest 5G Network Opens For Business In China

China’s three state-owned wireless carriers were poised Wednesday to unveil 5G services, with commercial operations expected to launch Friday.

A spokesman for the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said China Mobile Communications Group Co., China Telecommunications Group Corp., and China United Network Communications Group Co. are expected to unveil 5G service at a technology exhibit in Beijing Thursday. Their investment has been pegged at $43 billion. The cable network China Broadcasting Network Corp. also is participating.

Both China and the United States have been working on 5G networks that would offer superfast speeds, opening the way for a whole slew of new services and enable smart technologies that could include everything from robot factories to driverless trucks and unmanned tanks.

The rollout comes as the U.S. and China remain locked in a trade war that includes a boycott of Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies Co., the world’s biggest manufacturer of 5G equipment and second largest smartphone maker. The U.S. has banned Huawei technology, but other countries have ignored U.S. pressure to institute a global ban.

"Part of the honest dilemma is people don't know precisely what the risks will look like," Graham Webster, a technology commentator and editor at Stanford-New America's DigiChina project, told NPR. "Other countries have found the U.S. leap [to ban Huawei] there quizzical, which frankly makes trying to convince people harder to accomplish."

Without offering proof, the Trump administration has warned use of Huawei technology could provide the Chinese government with expanded intelligence gathering capability, something Huawei denies.

“While some other countries launched 5G services earlier this year, China will have the largest commercial operating 5G network in the world on Friday,” Chris Lane of Sanford C. Bernstein wrote in a note to clients.

More than 10 million people have pre-registered for 5G service in China. China Mobile has priced packages to begin at $18 a month, compared with $3 a month for 4G service. Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen were expected to get full coverage in the initial phase, with other cities getting hotspots. Initial benefits will include faster videos and games, more virtual reality applications and improved mobile videoconferencing.

Rolling out 5G service is expected to boost China’s digital economy at a time when signs of a slowdown have appeared. The technology is expected to be the next big growth driver, delivering speeds as much as 40 times faster than current 4G LTE networks.

China has been working on 5G with Huawei and ZTE Corp., the world’s fourth largest telecommunications equipment supplier, since 2013. Other manufacturers getting a piece of the action are Ericsson AB of Sweden and Finnish rival Nokia Oyj.

Huawei unveiled its 5G mobile antennae Oct. 16 at a client event in Zurich. It doubles bandwidth and boosts power output to 320 watts. The antennae is being bundled with the company’s Blade AAU base station. So far this year, the company has shipped 400,000 base stations as operators ramp up their 5G networks.

The first country to open full commercial 5G service was South Korea, whose network opened in April and was expected to have 5 million subscribers by the end of the year. Limited service also is available in the U.S., Britain, Japan and Australia.