Living Smart

036 037 I ENGINEERING & TECHNOLOGY Let’s have really healthy growth with 5G Prof. XU Yan Associate Dean of Business and Management (HKUST EMBA Program, Executive Programs and China Strategy), Professor, Department of Information Systems, Business Statistics and Operations Management T he global race for fifth generation supremacy is under way, with countries competing to be the first to provide 5G mobile broadband services. The ultra-fast network will prompt inventions, of which today we cannot even dream. Countries around the world have devoted much resource to developing, manufacturing and deploying the new equipment necessary for 5G transmissions. China, for instance, has recently become highly influential in the field with its ability to develop infrastructure for 5G systems worldwide. In Asia, Hong Kong has been blamed for being slow to launch the new service in comparison with the mainland, South Korea and Japan. Actually, a delay is not necessarily a bad thing, as it allows Hong Kong to have a longer testing period to ensure a more reliable and decent 5G mobile service. Hong Kong’ s privately-owned telecom market is very competitive and cautious. Similar to what happened with 3G, the operators will not make a move until the 5G technology has been proven to be mature enough, such as being stable and cost effective, until it can be introduced to the market. Vendors like Huawei have worked closely with operators in