More Chinese mobile users are subscribing to the 4G technology. (Photo : Reuters)
Before the year ends, China eyes to connect 400 million people to 4G networks to highlight its greatest feat in the national information technology sector over the past five years.
The country is currently regarded as the world's largest 4G market, with the most sophisticated networks and biggest user population. The fourth-generation telecommunications technology was only introduced in the country less than two years ago.
For Chen Shanzhi, vice president of Chinese telecom equipment maker Datang Group, "the rapid expansion in 4G was one of the greatest successes of the 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15)."
The Chinese government first laid out its 4G plans about a decade ago when it was crafting its five-year national development strategy for the telecom sector. At the begging of the plan, the authorities kicked off initial trials of the Time Division-Long Term Evolution technology or TD-LTE.
In early 2013, China Mobile Ltd., the biggest telecom carrier in the country by subscribers, started offering the TD-LTE for commercial use. Since then, it has dominated the local 4G market, with over 200 million subscribers as of August.
Meanwhile, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that there was a 65-percent year-on-year surge in the number of 4G users across the country. Now, the tally has already reached 277 million.
The statistics, however, noted that the number of 3G users, the largest telecom customer group, has seen a steady decline. In August, the figure dropped more than 7.8 million, the steepest fall during the last quarter.
According to Cao Shumin, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology president, 40 million smartphones are sold in China every month, the same pace as the level of the country's mobile data traffic.
