China has started conducting trials for 5G telecommunications equipment in more than 100 cities, as it targets to get a head start to lead the next generation of mobile phone systems.

The 5G technologies currently being tested have massive multiple-antenna systems that could handle more users and could support greater mobile data usage, South China Morning Post reported citing Bernstein Research.

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Theoretically, high-speed 5G networks are capable of transmitting data 20 times faster than the current 4G. It could achieve speeds to as much as 20 gigabits per second.

Furthermore, its latency, or the time needed for data to receive a reply when clicking an app, is projected to be 1 millisecond or less compared with 10 ms on 4G.

Being the home of the world's biggest 4G market with 1.3 billion users, China is on sufficient scale to either make or break a new global 5G standard, Chris Lane, a senior analyst from Bernstein, said.

The International Telecommunications Union, which is a unit of the United Nations, anticipates network deployment to begin at the end of the decade, soon after 5G standard have been set since global telecoms industry leaders believe a single standard would be very beneficial.

"The cost of having different standards is high for the industry," Wang Zhiqin, director of the Institute of Communications Standards Research at the China Academy of Information & Communications Technology, said.

Meanwhile David Dai Su, a spokesman from telecom equipment maker ZTE, told South China Morning Post that China Mobile also plans to conduct "pre-5G trials in more than 100 cities across more than 20 provinces."

Dai said that two other companies, namely, China Unicom and China Telecom, are also potentially doing some preparations, but no specific information was available. He also revealed that China Unicom and ZTE signed a cooperation agreement related to 5G research in August.

Tags5G, 5G Network, 5G trials, 5G wifi, China 5G network, 5G mobile, ZTE, china telecom, China Unicom