（Source: Xinhua Net）
Frustrated by the slow downloading speed? No worries, for this situation will be changed in 2020. The draft outline of the 13th Five-Year Plan states that China will promote research into key technology of 5G mobile communication and ultra wide band (UWB) and use 5G commercially.

With the implementation of the major science and technology project “New Generation Broadband Mobile Communication Network” from 2006 to 2015, China has made progress from following the trend of 2G technology to making breakthroughs in 3G technology and keeping pace with other countries in 4G technology. In the era of 5G, China should make greater contribution to the world,” said Deng Zhonghan, NPC member and Vice President of China Association for Science and Technology, on March 7.

What is 5G? And why do we need 5G? For the ordinary people, the most direct experience about 5G may be the comfort gained from greatly boosted Internet speed, the super joy of downloading gigabytes of movies and sending hundreds of pictures within seconds.
According to Hong Wei, Dean of the School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast University, “The dramatic progress of technology in the era of 5G will greatly reduce the energy consumption and costs of network building and running, and generate much space for rate reduction.”

Except being fast and cheap, 5G will also expand from mobile Internet to the Internet of Things, from person-to-person connection to person-to-thing and thing-to-thing connection, thus realizing the “connection of all things”.

Hong said, “The ‘Thing’ has a wide coverage, ranging from industrial facilities to medical instruments and transport tools. They will meet the need of such trades as the industry, medicine and transportation for information services through high-speed and stable data transmission enabled by 5G.”

“Seconds of delay may not affect interpersonal communication, but the case is totally different for the Internet of things, which might be bungled by even one second of delay,” said You Xiaohu, Director of the National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University.

According to You, the “Internet of Vehicles” in the future and even the era of “unmanned driving” have higher requirements for the speed of network transmission. “Likewise, smart grids, industrial control and other fields also have higher requirements for the synchronism of 5G technology.”

To accelerate the R&D of 5G, China has comprehensively planned the formulation of 5G standards and the R&D of key technologies and products and supported the building of the complete industrial chain that includes system chips, terminals and test instruments, so as to lay a solid foundation for the commercial use of 5G in 2020.

“Science giants such as the US, EU, Japan and Korea are investing large amounts of resources in the R&D of 5G. Similarly, China has been making breakthroughs in technology, ready to make its own contributions to formulating global standards,” said Deng Zhonghan. Deng also said that enterprises should be encouraged to grow their capacity in formulating standards.

“At present, Huawei, ZTE and Lenovo are doing well. We hope more enterprises can take the R&D of 5G as an opportunity to inspire more production factors and form the backbone of China’s innovation,” said Deng.