China 5G telephone subscriber numbers have reached 450 million, according to a report on Wednesday.
The country has built more than 1.16 million 5G base stations, the official Xinhua news agency quoted Luo Junjie, a spokesperson for the the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as saying on Tuesday.
The number of 5G users in China is expected to exceed 560 million by 2023, when 5G network will be used by more than 40% of personal mobile phone users, according to an industry development guideline issued in July.
Shipments of 5G phones in China surged 79.7% year on year to 168 million units in the first eight months of this year, data from the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology showed.
On Monday, Xi Jinping, China’s president, called for a greater focus on technology, pushing “digital economic development”.
Xi made the remarks while presiding over a Communist party politburo study session.
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