Mobile World Conference Shanghai focuses on 5G

 

The Mobile World Conference Shanghai 2015, which began Thursday, features a close look at the upcoming 5G mobile network.

The 5G network brings download speeds up to at least 1 gigabyte per second. That means that a high-definition film can be downloaded in seconds.

"We will gradually upgrade our network. We will first adopt some of the 5G technologies in our 4G network in 2016. You can see it as 4.5G," Li Zhengmao with China Mobile said.

"We are working on pre-5G technology to allow some 4G users to enjoy services close to 5G without changing their phones," Xiang Jiying with ZTE said.

The International Telecommunications Union announced the timetable for 5G networks last month. The union is set to create a universal 5G standard by 2018 and to commercialize that standard in 2020.

"In China, we have already done our market research, and we are trying to bring the right technology to consumers. Some of our research will finish in the second half of this year, and we will join the global standard from next year," said Cao Shumin, researcher with Ministry Of Industry & IT.

There will be only one standard around the world for 5G, in order to avoid the inefficiency that several standards produced in the 3G and 4G eras.

European Union statistics show that there are 1.2 billion mobile broadband Internet users around the world. The overall traffic of the mobile Internet in 2020 is predicted to be 30 times that of 2015.