China Telecom said it plans to run laboratory and networks tests until the end of next year, before commencing pre-commercialization of 5G technology in 2019. The telco aims to launch commercial 5G services in 2020.

China Telecom set up its 5G station in tech city Shenzhen

China Telecom set up its 5G station in tech city Shenzhen in early October covering various industrial zones including Shenzhen Software Industry Base. With these 5G base stations, the Asian operator said it can undertake end-to-end testing for key 5G technologies.

Last month, China Telecom signed an agreement with the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) to collaborate on several areas related to 5G including smart manufacturing, internet of things, smart cities, Big Data and networking.

China Telecom also said it is also looking into the use of cellular networks for emerging areas such as augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), the internet of vehicles.

Last month, the Chinese government kicked off the third phase of 5G technology research and development tests. China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said the third phase of technical tests aims to get pre-commercial products ready for when the first version of 5G standard comes out in June next year.

China recently completed the second phase of 5G tests. The Asian nation established the IMT-2020 development group in 2013 in a move to foster the development of 5G technologies. The IMT-2020 Promotion Group completed the initial phase of its trial program in 2016. That phase included testing wireless technologies including massive multiple-input-multiple-output, novel multiple access, new waveforms, advance coding, ultra-dense network implementations and high-frequency communications. The trial phase also included network slicing, edge computing and network function reconstruction.

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