Until today, China's 5G was officially "non-commercial" but building rapidly. The country is set to pass the entire Western world before the previous  Oct.1 launch date.  See 90,000-150,000 Chinese 5G sites go live Octoberfor an earlier report.* Probably for political reasons, Minister Miao Wei just moved up the date.  China Mobile, China Telecom, and China Unicom will build rapidly. They will be joined on the China Railway Towers by China's Radio and Television cable systems.

China Tower has 2.2 million sites and expects the carriers to upgrade most of them in the next few years. Towers and backhaul are in place. The upgrade will only require new radios, usually less than 15% of the cost.  

1 network is cheaper than 2. 2 networks are cheaper than 4. Minister Miao Wei tells the telcos to "promote the sharing of 5G networks," and issues a detailed set of directions for how that should be done. (Below) Miao placed sharing second after, "accelerating the pave of 5G commercialization was listed before sharing." At left: Miao Wei (with glasses) smiles as he hands a 5G license to China Mobile.

China already shares towers in a separate company. The European regulators at BEREC estimate that brings down costs by 16% to 33% when two share. The interesting addition in the directions below is that indoor radios should also be shared, a farsighted opinion.  

Comrade Miao also, "should thoroughly study and implement Xi Jinping's new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and resolutely implement the decision-making arrangements of the Party Central Committee." Of course.

The green areas on the map show 5G availability in central parts of Abu Dhabi. The company has a similar map showing good coverage in Dubai. The National reports Etisalat is rapidly putting up 1,000 base stations. Those should be able to serve most of the 9.4 million population, concentrated in a handful of densely packed cities. 

You do not buy a 5G service, just a phone. Your 4G plan will automatically connect to a 5G tower when in range. Service plans start from about US$50/month. The available phones are from XTE, Oppo, and Huawei, all costing over US$1,000. 

China Mobile Vice President Jian Qin: "5G mobile phones will be reduced to 1000-2000 yuan next year." (Google translation) (US$145-289) This corresponds to my earlier report from Peter Chou of Huawei that he is targeting $300 phones in 2020.

The question shouldn't be how they can go so low but rather "Why are 5G phones so expensive for now?" 5G phones are no longer mysterious. They require a better processor like a Qualcomm 855 or Huawei Kirin 980. A 5G modem and larger battery are also needed. The hardest part is the radio frequency front end (power amplifiers, transceivers, and especially filters.)  5G uses many more frequency bands. At the high speeds, only a few companies can make the parts. 

The difference in the costs of parts (bill of materials) between 4G and 5G models today should be US$40-75.  That will come down next year as MediaTek and UNISOC ship the 5G chips they have announced. Four companies - Skyworks, Qorvo, Broadcom/Avago, and Qualcomm/TDK - offer the RF parts, with several Chinese companies racing to deliver similar products.

Decent 4G phones this year cost US$200-300. Even US$110 buys a usable phone.

Next year, as always, costs will come down. 

No telecom engineer will be surprised that Peter Clarke recorded 344 Mbps downloads on 4G LTE to a BT Huawei tower. LTE has been testing over 1 gigabit in the lab and hundreds of megabits in the field for two years. 

T-Mobile CTO Neville Ray says that in theory the difference with NR should be 19% to 50%. In practice, I would expect less. If Peter had a 5G phone, the same spectrum at most would deliver about 480 Mbps. Huawei has improved 4G however, and the difference should be half.

Only salesman, politicians, and pundits believe ten times improvements from 5G. Interesting video of the actual test below

Vodafone and Sprint are offering Hatch, a service created by Vesa Jutila and other former execs of Rovio Angry Birds. After three years in stealth, for £6.99 Brits will be able to play Angry Birds, Hitman Go and Monument Valley, and 100 other games. It is currently only offering traditional mobile games, designed for limited phones and connections. It will probably work well with low latency Edge Networks. 

Tom Bedford believes, "5G gaming’s popularity could be dependant on its affordability, as people aren’t going to be likely to stream games if it’ll cost them a fortune."

For now, many telcos are pricing 5G at a premium. Hans Vestberg of Verizon estimates his costs are going down 90%. That implies that 5G prices will rapidly fall where competition is working.

 The 5G word from the companies, verbatim. Swisscom, Telstra, BT

Verizon only covers small parts of two cities with 5G, far under 1% of the population. The massive promotion has convinced many they are an early leader. They refuse to provide coverage maps or data. The three Koreans, Swisscom and probably Sprint have the only extensive coverage. So I'm sending a simple set of questions to all who announce deployments. Update 5/28 BT also pulled ahead of Verizon & AT&T, covering 8% of towers, about 1,000. 

About how many people can buy your service? About how many cells are working?  Can you estimate for 6 months from now and for three or four years from now? Do you offer a coverage map?

The three Koreans - SK, KT, LG - prove extensive coverage. Each covers about half the country with a year-end target of 90%, using a total of over 60,000 cells..