Huawei's rivals, including the Sweden-based LM Ericsson Group and China's ZTE Corp, have all moved into the field of 5G technology development, Zhao said.

In 2012, Huawei invested $4.8 billion in R&D, accounting for 13.7 percent of its annual sales. The company's R&D investment surpassed 130 billion yuan ($21.3 billion) over the past 10 years.

Although China hasn't yet started its 4G commercial service, the government is already paying a lot of attention to 5G technology development. Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Cao Jianlin said recently that the ministry will increase its investment and support for 5G technology.

According to public figures, the ministry has allocated about 160 million yuan to R&D work involving 5G technology in China this year. Cao said that China's approach to 5G innovation will be open and collaborative.

"Major international telecom companies and enterprises that are registered in China can take part in China's 5G R&D projects," Cao said.

Zhao has forecast that international 5G standards will be established around 2015, and 5G commercial networks will likely be launched in 2018.

"There are several issues that must be resolved before 5G can become a reality," said Xu.

"These include the availability of spectrum and technological challenges, such as how to engineer network architectures capable of handling increasingly higher data volumes and transmission speeds necessary to accommodate more users on the network," Xu said.

By 2020, about 6.5 billion people worldwide will use mobile networks for data communications, Huawei has estimated.

About 100 billion additional items, such as vehicles, meters, medical devices and home appliances, will also be connected to the network using 5G technology.