Song Tong: 5G temporary licenses may be issued in 2019

On May 9, the first China International Smart Terminal Industry Development Conference opened at the Yibin International Convention and Exhibition Center. This conference was the first joint effort of five major associations, namely the China Institute of Communications, China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, China People's Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries, China Real Estate Association, China Construction Industry Association, and Indian Communications and Electronics Association. With the theme of "Cross-border Innovation in the Era of Integration", it comprehensively displayed the ecological landscape of the smart terminal industry. 

        At the "5G Applications and Industry Trends" sub-forum meeting in the afternoon, Song Tong, deputy secretary-general of the China Communications Society, said that 5G has become the commanding height and focus of competition and development among governments and leading technology companies, and temporary operating licenses are expected to be issued this year.

        Song Tong said that the three major application scenarios of 5G, including enhanced mobile broadband, large-scale machine-type communications, and ultra-reliable, low-latency communications, all meet the needs of industries including medical, automotive, and transportation.

        At present, my country has achieved breakthroughs in key technologies such as 5G large-scale antenna network coding. In June last year, ITU also issued 25 standards. With the development, our country's commercial use has also entered the countdown. According to the unified deployment of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, 5G frequencies and licenses have been issued to three operators at the end of last year. It is expected that temporary operating licenses will be issued this year. Operators are also increasing experiments in various places for different scenarios such as high-definition video, industrial Internet, and Internet of Things. In the next step, large-scale 5G network experiments will also be carried out. In addition, the research and development process of 5G chips and terminals has also been greatly accelerated.

        Finally, Song Tong mentioned that Qualcomm, Intel, Samsung and others have successively released 5G chips, and Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi and others have also released 5G mobile phones. 5G still faces some challenges. The application of 5G technology in vertical industries has unclear requirements, lack of policies, regulations and standards, etc. These require the joint efforts of experts and talents in various fields, standard innovation, and technological innovation to continuously contribute wisdom and strength to the development of the industry.