Guests talk with each other at the World Internet Conference held in Wuzhen, Zhejiang province. [Photo by Zhang Wei/chinadaily.com.cn]

The number of 5G mobile connections in China will likely reach 1 billion by 2025, said John Hoffman, CEO of GSMA Ltd, an international mobile operator association.

Hoffman made the estimation during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Internet Conference Wuzhen Summit, which kicked off on Wednesday in Wuzhen, East China's Zhejiang province.

"China, in particular, has been very proactive in scaling the use of 5G in vertical, establishing new business models to drive wider usage across sectors and speeding up digital transformation in everything from mining to ports and manufacturing, showing that as 5G grows it can bring endless potential to all business sectors," Hoffman said.

As of the end of September, China had 3.189 million 5G base stations, covering all the urban areas of prefecture-level and county-level cities. Every 10,000 Chinese residents now share about 22.6 5G base stations, giving rise to a variety of computing power scenario demands, data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed.

GSMA expects that 5G will add nearly $1 trillion to the global GDP by 2030, and almost half of this will come from the services sector.