China is racing to ramp up 5G connections in its biggest cities

Country has an advantage over the US in the scale of its infrastructure

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China is racing to ramp up 5G connections in its biggest cities

Karen Chiu

Published: 4:00pm, 10 Jul 2019Updated: 9:08am, 20 Sep 2019

This article originally appeared on ABACUS

At first glance, it looked like the car was driving itself. A backup driver was sitting behind the wheel, but his hands laid idle as the vehicle cruised steadily on a deserted road in Beijing.

The car, though, wasn’t controlled by a computer. It was driven by a human, who was steering the vehicle from a remote panel located more than 600 miles away in Shanghai. The stunt, performed at this month’s Shanghai Auto Show, demonstrated just one of the many potential technologies promised by 5G.

Why 5G isn't just faster video streaming on your smartphone

At its most basic, 5G offers obvious benefits to the current internet landscape: Faster internet speeds, minimal processing delays and improved performance in smart home devices, just to name a few. It’s no wonder that China is pushing ahead to build the infrastructure it needs to bring 5G to the whole country.

In June, China granted its first 5G commercial licenses to the country’s big three telecom operators -- China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom -- as well as the China Broadcasting Network. Huawei, which has up to half of the country’s telecom equipment market, is optimistic that this will accelerate 5G deployment.

“China is expected to deploy upwards of 200,000 5G base stations across the country by the end of the year -- a speed and scale that far surpasses any other market in the world,” said Yang Chaobin, Huawei’s 5G product head, according to the China Internet Report 2019.