Photo/Shetuwang

June 4 (NBD) -- China will soon grant 5G licenses for commercial use, the country's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) said Monday.

Foreign enterprises including Nokia, Ericsson, Qualcomm and Intel have been deeply involved in the experiment of the technologies, and China's 5G is ready for commercial use thanks to the joint efforts from various parties, the MIIT stated.

"The message the MIIT sent is aimed to draw attention to China's 5G market from foreign enterprises," said Zhao Yu, senior analyst in the telecommunications industry, in an interview with National Business Daily (NBD).

China now owns more than 30 percent of the standard essential patents for the 5G technology, according to the MIIT.

In the views of Zhao, an open and cooperative market is beneficial for unifying international 5G standards. "China's accelerating commercial use of 5G can lower costs for the industry and create a Chinese sample of 5G application which could provide referential path of evolution and business model for global 5G development," Zhao said to NBD.

Connecting 5G equipment manufacturers upstream and signal receivers downstream such as phones, telecom operators play a decisive role, in that their construction process of 5G network directly determines when the users can have access to the high-speed 5G services.

Late last month, China Telecom's chairman Ke Ruiwen announced that the mobile operator will invest 9 billion yuan (1.3 billion U.S. dollars) in the development of 5G this year, and is deploying 5G commercial network.

China Unicom in April launched its 5G trial network in seven cities including Shanghai, Beijing, Guangzhou and Xiongan. It's reported that China Unicom plans to invest 6-8 billion yuan in 5G this year.

Zhao Yu told NBD that China currently boasts more than 3 million 4G base stations, which constitute a network with wide coverage for installing 5G.

So is it time to consider a 5G phone yet?

Common users should wait till 2020 to buy a 5G handset, remarked Fu Liang, analyst in the telecom industry. Fu believed that the price of a 5G phone will stand at around 6,000 yuan in March 2020 and will be reduced to 2,000 yuan in the fourth quarter of the year.

Email: gaohan@nbd.com.cn