By Juan Pedro Tomás
The Chinese government expects to accelerate efforts to expand 5G infrastructure across the country this year, local newspaper South China Morning Post reported citing Xiao Yaqing, the head of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).
The minister said that China currently has 1.45 million installed 5G base stations that support over 500 million subscribers nationwide.
“Moving forward, we will step up our efforts in base stations. What we have now is not enough,” Xiao said, adding that the government will accelerate support for advanced 5G applications.
China expects local carriers to install nearly 600,000 5G base stations during 2022 to end the year with 2 million installed 5G base stations.
Xiao also indicated that China aims to maintain its leadership in the 5G field, while planning and laying the foundation for research and development on future 6G technology.
Chinese operators recorded a net gain of 28.3 million 5G subscribers in January, according to the carriers’ latest available figures.
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, added a total of 14.48 million 5G subscribers during the first month of 2022.The operator said it ended January with 401.28 million 5G subscribers, compared to 386.80 million 5G customers in December 2021.
China Mobile has added a total of 221.8 million subscribers in the 5G segment during 2021.
Rival operator China Unicom said it added a total of 5.56 million 5G subscribers during January. China Unicom ended the month with 160.49 million 5G subscribers.
Meanwhile, China Telecom added 8.26 million 5G subscribers in January to take its total 5G subscribers base to 196 million. During 2021, the telco added a total of 101.3 million 5G subscribers.
China expects to see the number of 5G users exceed 560 million by 2023, according to a government guideline released in July 2021. By then, the 5G network is expected to be used by over 40 per cent of personal mobile phone users, and every 10,000 people in China will enjoy more than 18 5G base stations, the guideline said.
MIIT recently 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.
