INSIGHTS | What we learned from China’s World 5G Convention

About a year after China launched its first public 5G networks, it held a major telecommunications event in the southern city of Guangzhou on Nov. 26-27. The second annual World 5G Convention (W5GC) attracted top executives from the country’s three state-owned carriers (China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom) and high-level officials from telecom regulators to the event. 

Representatives of several overseas carriers including Spain’s Telefonica, Singapore’s Singtel, Deutsche Telekom, and America’s AT&T also attended by video link. But W5GC was more China than world: the agenda centered on China’s deployment and applications of next-generation 5G networks, while almost all foreign speakers were allocated to a “global forum.”

Not all information from the world-level conference was new, but the message delivered by officials is important: China is counting for future economic growth on a series of cutting-edge technologies enabled by ultra-fast 5G networks, which includes electric vehicles, artificial intelligence, and big data. In the short term, 5G is seen as a remedy for the country’s virus-hit economy.

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