Chinaese telecoms are to begin offering 5G mobile services to the public on Friday next week, the Beijing News reported yesterday.
China Mobile Ltd (中國移動), the nation’s largest telecom, is to introduce the service in Beijing, the newspaper said, citing the general manager of its Beijing office.
The nation’s other two operators are to also roll out the service for customers on the same day, the paper said, citing sources it did not identify.
The introductions come about four months after China issued commercial 5G licenses to the nation’s three main telecoms and one broadcaster, setting the nation on course to be among the world’s first to introduce the technology for consumers.
China is poised to become the world’s largest 5G market by users, a position that could help it set global standards for such networks, and boost its drive to become a leader in technologies from robotics to autonomous driving and factory automation.
The three Chinese operators are planning combined capital expenditure of 302 billion yuan (US$42.72 billion) this year, including the costs to build 130,000 base stations.
China Mobile intends to provide commercial 5G services in 50 cities this year, with a goal of reaching 340 cities next year, chairman Yang Jie (楊杰) said earlier this month.
More than 10 million Chinese have made online bookings for 5G services, pending the release of package prices, according to the Web sites of China Mobile, China Unicom Hong Kong Ltd (中國聯通) and China Telecom Corp (中國電信).
China Unicom chief executive Wang Xiaochu (王曉初) in August said that the company’s 5G packages would be as cheap as 190 yuan a month.
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”
TRANSFORMATION: Taiwan is now home to the largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, thanks to the nation’s economic policies President Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) yesterday attended an event marking the opening of Google’s second hardware research and development (R&D) office in Taiwan, which was held at New Taipei City’s Banciao District (板橋). This signals Taiwan’s transformation into the world’s largest Google hardware research and development center outside of the US, validating the nation’s economic policy in the past eight years, she said. The “five plus two” innovative industries policy, “six core strategic industries” initiative and infrastructure projects have grown the national industry and established resilient supply chains that withstood the COVID-19 pandemic, Tsai said. Taiwan has improved investment conditions of the domestic economy
Sales in the retail, and food and beverage sectors last month continued to rise, increasing 0.7 percent and 13.6 percent respectively from a year earlier, setting record highs for the month of March, the Ministry of Economic Affairs said yesterday. Sales in the wholesale sector also grew last month by 4.6 annually, mainly due to the business opportunities for emerging applications related to artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing technologies, the ministry said in a report. The ministry forecast that retail, and food and beverage sales this month would retain their growth momentum as the former would benefit from Tomb Sweeping Day