By Juan Pedro Tomás
Chinese telcos have already deployed nearly 1.6 million 5G base stations nationwide, local press reported, citing Zhang Yunming, deputy head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
“Fixed broadband has been upgraded from 100 megabits per second to 1,000 megabits per second, and the proportion of optical fiber users has increased from less than 10 per cent in 2012 to 94.3 per cent in 2021,” the official said.
According to Zhang, China has deployed fiber-optic networks in 130,000 villages and 4G base stations in 60,000 villages, which enables local telcos to provide full rural broadband coverage.
The official added that 5G applications include transportation, medical care, education, culture, tourism and other fields in China.
Also, he said that industrial Internet has been applied to 45 major sectors of the Chinese economy, covering research and development, design, production and manufacturing and services, among other sectors.
China ended the first quarter of the year with over 400 million 5G users, Chinese press reported, according to the latest available data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
In the first quarter of 2022, China added a total of 48.1 million 5G users to reach a total of 403 million. The ministry said that the country had reached a 5G penetration of 24.3per cent.
Chinese operators aim to build 600,000 new 5G base stations this year, including 134,000 already built in the first quarter. China expects to end this year with nearly 2 million 5G base stations, according to previous reports.
Chinese carriers reportedly deployed a total of 654,000 base stations nationwide during last year.
The country’s 5G networks now covers all prefecture-level cities, more than 98 per cent of county-level urban areas and 80 per cent of township-level urban areas across the country..
Earlier this year, MIIT unveiled plans to more than triple the number of 5G base stations over the next four years, targeting a total of 3.64 million by end-2025.
Under this plan, China aims to have 26 5G base stations for every 10,000 people by the end of 2025. In comparison, in 2020, there were five 5G base stations for every 10,000 people in China.
China is expected to reach 892 million connections in the 5G segment in 2025, according to a report recently published by the GSMA.
According to the ‘The Mobile Economy China” report, GSMA expects 5G connections in the country to represent 52 per cent of total mobile lines in 2025, compared to 29 per cent in 2021.
“Due to the rapid take-up of 5G in China, the region is one of the global leaders in terms of 5G adoption. In 2021, China added more than 285 million 5G connections, with its share of global 5G connections equivalent to 75 per cent,” the report states.
GSMA noted that the Chinese regulator’s facilitation of commercial network-sharing agreements has enabled fast base station deployments and considerable cost savings for local operators. “Moreover, fully realizing the mobile opportunity will require forward looking policymaking, particularly with respect to spectrum. To this end, regulators should aim to make a total of 2 GHz of mid-band spectrum available to support the growth of 5G over the 2025–2030 period,” GSMA’s report said.
The report also stated that mainland China represents the single largest 5G market in the world, with 5G connections accounting for over three-quarters of the global total at the end of 2021.
