China launches 5G mobile phone services

Three Chinese carriers officially launched 5G mobile phone services on Thursday, meaning the next generation of wireless technologies has now entered the world's largest telecoms market.

China's carriers offer various monthly 5G price packages, starting from just 128 yuan ($18.10). China Mobile, for example, provides 5G packages ranging from 128 yuan to 598 yuan, with total data of 30 gigabytes (GB) to 300 GB. China Telecom has seven price packages, with its cheapest being 129 yuan.

Users of China Mobile can enjoy 5G services in 50 cities in China, including four first-tier cities and many second and third-tier cities including Nanjing in East China's Jiangsu Province and Chengdu in Southwest China's Sichuan Province, the company said in a press release.

At present, more than 10 million people in China have booked the services, as the three carriers compete to win customers.

Meanwhile, domestic and foreign mobile phone manufacturers including Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi and Samsung have released 5G smartphones.

Despite competitive pricing, many Chinese netizens have said that the price of 5G mobile phone services is a little too high. On Sina Weibo, China's Twitter-like micro-blog, a user posted, "It will become a new normal that consumers can afford 5G smartphones but can't afford mobile phone services provided by the three carriers."

While some netizens are complaining that the latest 5G price packages do not include unlimited data, analysts say the average prices of China's 5G services are the lowest among countries that have already launched 5G services. 

"It's affordable for about 300 million Chinese mobile users, and we expect the number of 5G users to rise and the package prices to go down," Xiang Ligang, director-general of the Beijing-based Information Consumption Alliance, told the Global Times.

"5G will empower smart manufacturing, smart cities, media, education and other domains, and will play a crucial role in upgrading industries," Wang Xiaochu, chairman of China Unicom, said at a launch event held in Beijing on Thursday.

China will establish 130,000 5G base stations by the end of this year, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.