ZTE's stand at a technology expo in Beijing, Sept 22, 2015. [Photo/VCG]

HONG KONG - China is expected to launch a commercial operation of 5th generation (5G) mobile networks in 2020, and to realize a large-scale application in 2022 or 2023, an expert with the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) of China said here in a recent interview with Xinhua.

Wang Zhiqin, an expert with the China Academy of Telecommunication Research of MIIT, said China started 5G research and development as early as other countries. In 2013, the Chinese government established IMT-2020 (5G) Promotion Group, to boost systematic promotion of 5G.

As one of the leaders of the group, Wang said MIIT coordinated to conduct the worldwide biggest experiment of 5G technology research and development in January this year, and completed the phase 1 test in September.

"China is willing to formulate a unified global 5G standard with other countries," She said, adding that the global research on 5G standard started in March, and it is estimated that the first version will be completed in June, 2018.

"We started early and have accumulated a lot of experience," Wang said. "I hope China can be one of the 'dominant players' in standard formulation."

She explained that telecommunication is a globalized and huge industry, and customers are looking forward to a unified standard, "we need to be more responsible and cooperate with the international mainstream enterprises."

She said 5G is designed for Internet of Everything (IoE), and 4G offers mobile Internet to people. As the increasing need for low delay and high reliability, 4G faces big challenges.

"Time delay of 4G is from 10ms to 20ms, but some application scenarios with low delay and high reliability requires less than 0.5ms," Wang said, "and 5G can do that."

She took automatic drive as example - "to realize automatic drive, vehicles should be connected with each other and have the ability to avoid crashes in high speed, which needs a very low time delay."

China has attached great importance to 5G in the 13th national Five-Year Plan (2016-2020) and has set the goal of 5G commercialization by 2020.