China to push ahead with 5G-A deployments

A visitor tries out VR products at the 2024 Mobile World Congress in Shanghai. CHEN AIPING/XINHUA China will step up efforts to commercialize 5G Advanced, or 5G-A, technologies, which will help accelerate the application of artificial intelligence in more sectors and pave the way for identifying key 6G technologies, officials and company executives said on Wednesday. Zhao Zhiguo, chief engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, said at the opening ceremony of the 2024 Mobile World Congress Shanghai that it is highly important to deepen the integration of 5G with new-generation information technologies, especially AI. Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, underscored AI's potential to become a new information service gateway and said the company plans to integrate expertise from various fields to launch AI intelligent systems in healthcare, education and entertainment. Wang said that"2024 marks the convergence of the 5G-A commercial year and the AI-to-device year, heralding the mobile AI era where intelligent services become ubiquitous."