The three major telecom operators have begun to deploy 5G messaging on a large scale

5G messaging, which is seen by the industry as WeChat's biggest competitor, is advancing rapidly.

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The reporter learned yesterday that China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom have all begun large-scale deployment of 5G messages, and 5G messages are expected to become one of the first 5G applications seen by individual users.

The concept of 5G messaging was first proposed by the three major operators in the "5G Message White Paper" released on April 8 this year. Since then, domestic 5G messaging-related standard projects have been carried out simultaneously in multiple working groups, led by the three major operators.

At present, the standards for 5G message overall technical requirements, 5G message terminal technical requirements, and 5G message terminal testing methods have entered the approval stage. As the construction of the standard system has achieved phased results, the new industrial application ecosystem is growing from scratch.

Participants in the 5G messaging industry chain mainly include telecom operators, terminal manufacturers, application development companies, and industry customer companies.

In terms of telecom operators, my country's three basic telecom companies have entered the stage of live network deployment. Among them, China Mobile has a faster construction speed, and the network side functions are basically ready for commercial use; China Telecom and China Unicom are relatively lagging behind, but with the help of leading 5G messaging equipment companies such as ZTE and Huawei, they will soon be ready for commercial use.

As for terminal manufacturers, according to statistics, some models of Huawei, ZTE, Xiaomi, Honor, OPPO, vivo and other brands currently support 5G messaging. In the view of industry insiders, the support of terminal products for 5G messaging is an important factor in the successful implementation of the product and service.

In terms of application development companies, Fu Guoqiang, senior engineer at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that the companies that have started to develop applications are mainly SDK manufacturers and leading SP companies. These two types of companies have a clear advantage in the industry due to their strong technical capabilities and abundant financial strength.

The real success of 5G messaging also requires the support of a further prosperous ecosystem. Wang Quan, vice president of ZTE, recently said that 5G messaging not only relies on the continuous optimization and improvement of operators' platform capabilities, technical capabilities, and operational capabilities, but more importantly, the construction of the industrial chain and the creation of an ecosystem.

The reporter learned that China Mobile will try to share business development benefits with its partners and work with the industry to expand the scale of 5G messaging business.