The Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and the China IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group announced the 5G network timetable in November 2016. China will launch the second phase of the 5G network test in 2017 and the large-scale trial network in 2018. In 2019, the 5G network will be launched, and the fastest commercial 5G network will be established in 2020.
In June 2015, at the 22nd meeting of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) WP5D, key elements such as the name, vision and timetable of IMT were identified. In the IMT family of the International Telecommunications Union, the third generation mobile communication (3G) is called IMT-2000, and the fourth generation mobile communication (4G) is called IMT-Advanced. Now, the fifth generation is officially named IMT-2020.
The goal of 5G is to achieve the unification of global standards, which are developed by the ITU. As a non-technical organization, the ITU will entrust technical organizations such as 3GPP to develop 5G standards. 3GPP mainly conducts multi-party negotiations by equipment vendors, terminal vendors and operators, and finally determines technical standards and roadmaps.
According to the 3GPP's timetable, the early mobile 5G specification will be launched as early as the end of 2017, and the first version of the 5G standard will be launched in the second half of 2018. Domestically, in accordance with the plan of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, in 2017, China launched the second phase of 5G technology R&D trials, and verified the application scenarios for 5G mobile Internet and IoT. After completing the second phase of testing, large-scale network technology development and testing will be conducted in 2018. After the official announcement of the 5G standard, China entered the network construction phase, and the official commercial 5G network was established as soon as 2020.