Namibian President Hage Geingob (first right in front row) and other guests try out VR equipment under 4.5G network by Huawei in Windhoek, Namibia, in April. (Photo/Xinha)
In the trial, held in eastern China's Jiangsu province, a drone was flown using the operator's cellular network with 5G-enabled technologies and with handovers across multiple sites.
The technology can be potentially used to support mission-critical applications such as emergency services, if end-to-end low latency is guaranteed, China Mobile said in a statement.
Latency is defined as the amount of time it takes for a packet of data to get from one point to another.
Huang Yuhong, deputy head of China Mobile Research Institute, said 5G will no longer be a simple technology or a system. Instead, it is a platform where the telecom industry needs to be deeply linked with other sectors.
As part of its efforts to promote 5G, the firm's R&D spending grows 30 percent annually, currently accounting for 2.3 percent of its total revenue, Huang added.
In February, the State-owned firm set up a 5G innovation center by teaming up with 11 partners including Huawei, Ericsson, Nokia and Qualcomm Inc. The center focuses on 5G technologies that can support the internet of things and the use of the internet in manufacturing and industrial production.
Huawei, the world's largest telecom equipments manufacturer, is taking a more practical approach on the road to 5G. The Shenzhen-based firm is set to apply 4.5G technology, which can improve data transfer speeds through the use of existing telecommunications infrastructure.
It plans to upgrade 60 networks to 4.5G this year by partnering with global telecom carriers, including TeliaSonera AB in Norway.
"We are the first to show the world that it is possible to boost internet speed to over 1Gbps from 150 Mbps by using the current 4G infrastructure," Xu Wenwei, strategic marketing president at Huawei, said in an interview with Chinese news portal sohu.com.
Xiang Ligang, founder of the telecom industry website cctime.com, said it is still several years before the international community reaches a consensus on 5G network standards.
But the demand for superfast internet speed is growing quickly amid the increasing popularity of services such as cloud computing and streaming ultra-highdefinition videos.
"It makes great sense to experiment with 4.5G. Technologies enabling the large-scale commercial use of 4.5G are very likely to be accepted as part of 5G standards," Xiang said.
