More and more Chinese students and teachers have embraced online courses in the spring this year as the opening of schools is delayed due to the COVID-19 epidemic. However, students of a high school in Shanghai have experienced something different.
Over 2,000 students from Shanghai Yangjing-Juyuan Experimental School recently had a livestreaming martial art course. A gym teacher demonstrated four sets of martial art exercises, while all the movements can be done at home.
Different from a relatively fixed angle, students were allowed to zoom in or out on the teacher and view the movements from different angles through their computers or mobile phones. Through careful observation, students can learn all the movements without coming into close contact with their peers and teachers.
The complicated process required 16 4K cameras to capture high-quality videos, but to broadcast the livestreaming smoothly online with thousands of viewers, a faster and more stable 5G network has lent a helping hand.
This was a new application of 5G technology, since China greenlighted the commercial use of the superfast wireless technology in June last year.
Currently, the most striking achievement of China's 5G technology is its wide use in the fight against the novel coronavirus epidemic. Technicians have integrated 5G technology with artificial intelligence, cloud computing and ultra high definition video technology to benefit more people including COVID-19 patients, medics and residents.
Based on 5G technology and the Internet of things, a kind of intelligent door magnetic system, which has been applied in the provinces of Jiangsu and Guangdong, is able to monitor the state of the gate of a family who needs to be isolated for quarantine and promptly report back to community workers.
Many hospitals have realized remote medical diagnoses and shared real-time clinical treatment and nucleic acid detection results of a large number of patients with other medical institutions through the 5G network.
In late March, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued a circular to accelerate the development of 5G technologies in a wide range of fields, such as facilitating the construction of the 5G network, enriching the application scenarios of 5G technology, investing heavily in the R&D of 5G technology and strengthening 5G network safety.
Meanwhile, China's major telecom operators China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom also echoed their intention to join hands and accelerate the construction of 5G network infrastructure.
A report recently released by GSMA, an international association of mobile operators forecast that China will embrace nearly 45 percent of the world's total 1.8 billion 5G subscribers by 2025, adding that China still led the world in 5G development despite the COVID-19 epidemic.
Wang Zhiqin, deputy director of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said China would spend 1.2 trillion yuan (about 170 billion U.S. dollars) on 5G network construction and drive over 3.5 trillion yuan in investment in other related sectors by 2025.
Wang said the commercial use of 5G is expected to generate over 8 trillion yuan in emerging consumption in e-commerce, government service, online education and entertainment from 2020 to 2025.
