China Unicom's Liao Jun predicts that the number of 5G users in China may exceed 1 billion in 2024

The first China International Smart Terminal Industry Development Conference kicked off at the Yibin International Convention and Exhibition Center. At the "5G Applications and Industry Trends" forum of the conference, Liao Jun, director of artificial intelligence at China Unicom Network Technology Research Institute, mentioned in his speech that "by 2024, China's 5G users will exceed 1 billion." It is predicted that by 2025, China's 5G user penetration rate will reach more than 90%.

       The three major features of 5G networks, namely large bandwidth, low latency, and massive connections, have brought new development opportunities to the fields of consumer Internet and industrial Internet, and have also triggered a global 5G investment boom. It is predicted that between 2020 and 2025, global investment in 5G will reach 3.5 trillion US dollars, of which China will reach 1 trillion US dollars, accounting for about 30%. As the infrastructure of 5G continues to mature, when 5G is combined with cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things, artificial intelligence and other technologies, it will become a new driving force for economic transformation and development. Liao Jun introduced that by 2030, 5G is expected to bring China direct economic output of 6.3 trillion yuan, and indirect economic output will reach 10.6 trillion yuan.

       At present, China Unicom has launched 5G pilot projects in 17 cities across the country to promote 5G application incubation and industrial upgrading. Among them, large-scale trials are being carried out in five cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Wuhan), and demonstration and verification of typical 5G services are being carried out in 12 cities to accelerate the commercialization process of 5G.