50 years have passed since the first message was sent over the ARPANET in 1969 when Internet was officially born. Today, more than 55% of the world population enjoy surfing online, while for China, the proportion is even larger.

However, the once charming invention seems to be losing its glory. According to the data released by China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), up to Dec 2018, China had more than 800 million Internet users, and the Internet penetration reached 59.6%, up 3.8 percentage points year on year.

The rapid development of Internet had been riding on the demographic dividend in China, but now the left 40 percent (around 562 million) are mostly senior citizens and children, meaning the growth rate might be reaching its limits.

These numbers from China are not encouraging.

And capital is quick to respond: NASDAQ Internet Index (QNET) declined from June 2018, and this downward had not end by January this year, making the index fall by 30% compared with June last year, to the level of summer 2017. The Chinese Internet companies listed also went down.

People say the golden age belonged to the Internet is over. I disagree. Beyond the difficulties, there is a silver lining: New momentums emerge, namely, 5G, artificial intelligence, and the industrial Internet.

First, the time for 5G, or the fifth generation wireless network, is coming.

Based on continuous innovation of telecom technology, in the era of 5G, users would be able to enjoy 100 times increase in traffic density, 30 times rise in peak data rates, and magnitude improvement compared with the experience of 4G.

Obviously, the mobile communication revolution, from 4G to 5G, is on the way, which promises higher speeds, lower latency, more connections, so as to support the development of mobile Internet and the industrial Internet.

For instance, VR and AR are not new, but as the bandwidth is insufficient, the experience is not so good. 4K HD video normally needs 25Mbps bandwidth while 8K UHD video about 100Mbps bandwidth. True, 4G could support this, however, the experience is not satisfying. For the same reason, the 3D computer graphics processing needs 5G to provide Gbps bandwidth. No doubt, the emergence of 5G would boost the VR and AR development in the future.

By 2035, according to the research report of Qualcomm and IHS, global GDP is estimated to increase 7%, corresponding to $3.5 trillion because of 5G; for China, because of 5G, the country’s GDP will increase by nearly $1 trillion, and nearly 10 million new jobs will be created. And that is why 5G is so welcomed.

The second engine is artificial intelligence.

How could AI contribute to the human society? It helps to improve labor productivity, to boom consumption and to advance product quality. AI's contribution to labor productivity, estimated by global market consultancy McKinsey, will exceed 55 percent of GDP from 2017 to 2030.

Think about the automatic drive, by 2025, it will bring a trillion-dollar economy, reduce traffic accidents and save 3,000-150,000 lives annually, not to mention to reduce emissions.

Medicine, automotive, finance, retail, entertainment, manufacturing, energy are all major application areas for AI.

As is known, voice-recognition technology and face-recognition technology are wildly applied in China. Hi-tech companies are booming by providing such kind of services.

There are also vast industrial applications of artificial intelligence. For instance, Tsinghua University and NVIDIA worked together to identify the accuracy of PCB (Printed Circuit Board) boards by using AI. Having many layers but very close connections, PCB boards’ accuracy is not easy for human eyes to identify, which caused the error rate at 14%. Now, this problem has been solved because of AI.

By 2030, AI is expected to contribute an additional 13 trillion US dollars of GDP growth to the world, with an average annual growth rate of 1.2 percent, which is comparable to steam engine in the 19th century, industrial robot in the 20th century and information technology in the 21st century, according to McKinsey.

Industrial Internet is the third momentum we could count on.

From desktop website to mobile web to the Internet of Things (IoT), and now to Industrial internet, the development of the Internet has been changing rapidly and getting to a new stage. But what is the exact definition of this so-called industrial Internet?

The industrial Internet is the integration of ideas of big data, AI, mobile web, 5G, IoT, cloud computing, block chain, so on and so forth. It also incorporates industrial technologies such as intelligent machines and advanced manufacture.

There are obvious differences between the first-stage Internet and industrial internet. Generally speaking, the Internet is human-oriented while the industrial Internet is object-oriented, which would result in quite different types of terminals and performance requirements.

Nevertheless, we can surely be optimistic about the future of the industrial Internet, for it has shown its widespread commercial value and the prospects for development.

A joint study by the World Bank and GE Corporation shows that 82 trillion US dollars will be added in certain industries because of the industrial Internet in 2025, accounting for 50% of the GDP.

Thus, by 2030, three new momentums—5G, AI and the industrial Internet—are respectively estimated to reach the scale of 12-15 trillion US dollars globally. That is to say, great technological and market opportunities lie ahead, which should be very good news for China’s Internet industry.

The author is president of Internet Society of China and member of Chinese Academy of Engineering.

The author contributed this article to China Watch exclusively. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of China Watch.

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