The Asian telco looks to deploy 10,000 5G sites across China by 2020.
China Mobile plans to launch tests of “5G” technology next year, Chinese press reported, with the telco looking to roll out nearly 10,000 5G base stations by 2020.
According to the reports, China Mobile will initially deploy a limited number of 5G base stations in four or five cities across China in order to test the potential of the new technology. The mobile operator plans to focus its efforts on 5G research and development, according to officials from China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, with a strong focus on testing 5G products and services beginning in 2018.
In 2018, China Mobile expects to roll out at least 20 5G sites in several cities across the country, with the main goal of testing end-to-end services. The carrier is said to initially focus on sub-6 GHz spectrum, with a view to eventually begin testing higher frequency bands.
China Mobile is the world’s largest mobile operator having ended October with more than 497 million LTE connections, and a goal of reaching 500 million LTE connections by year-end. The carrier expects to add 100,000 LTE base stations this year, taking its total to 1.4 million.
