China reportedly plans to conduct 5G trials spanning more than 100 cities to help ensure the country plays a key role in 5G technology development.
A spokesperson for ZTE told the South China Morning Post that China Mobile alone is planning pre-5G trials in more than 100 cities across more than 20 provinces. The operator plans to roll out 5G services in 2020 once the standard becomes finalized.
It is unclear whether the two other state-owned operators are also involved in trials.
According to the report, analysts believe “China Inc” has a strong interest in ensuring that a significant amount of Chinese technology is embedded into the 5G standard. This would free vendors of their need to pay royalties on foreign technologies.
The telecoms sector is also trying to avoid a repeat of the fragmentation of the 4G standard into TDD and FDD LTE. A single standard would be hugely beneficial to the industry. China developed the TDD standard as an attempt to escape the royalty issue.
Huawei and ZTE are closely involved in 5G technology development, and Japan's SoftBank recently arranged to test 5G-ready equipment from the two vendors in Japan, which is expected to be one of the first markets to adopt 5G.