This Day, That Year: Nov 4

Editor's note: This year marks the 70th anniversary of the founding of New China.

An item in China Daily from Nov 4, 1985, showed the launch of Beijing's first citywide radio-paging service at the Long Distance Telephone Center on West Chang'an Avenue.

When pagers were introduced in China in the early 1980s, the small devices were considered a status symbols by many. But that waned in a few years as mobile telecommunications technology continued to evolve.

Data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed China had 1.57 billion mobile subscribers as of the end of last year. As a result, the use of pagers, fixed phones and landlines, has been declining steadily.

After many years of development, communication in the digital age has reached levels of ease and convenience unimaginable just a few decades ago.

Smartphones allow users to go online and access social networking apps offering text, voice and video-messaging services, one-to-one or in group chats, all without additional charges.

With smartphones came cashless payments, which have become part of everyday life in China. People can leave their homes without carrying cash or bank cards and can use digital wallet services on their phones for shopping, dining or donating.

The country is the world's largest market for mobile payments, with some 583 million users last year, a rise of 10.7 percent from 2017, according to a recent report from the China Internet Network Information Center.

From the era of electric telegraphy to the modern internet protocol-based networks, the evolution from first generation to fifth generation networks has been achieved.

The next generation of high-speed 5G technology will be able to transmit data at least 10 times faster than the existing 4G system. In the 5G era, higher reliability and lower latency can be realized, putting the internet of things within reach in new ways.

China officially kicked off commercialization of 5G services on Thursday, with the nation's big three telecom operators-China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom-rolling out data plans.

Many consumers can now pay to access the superfast speed of 5G. More than 86,000 5G base stations have entered service already across the country.