China Tower currently owns and operates a total of 2.5 million telecom towers across the Asian nation
Chinese state-run telecom tower company China Tower Corp has signed a cooperation agreement with compatriot firm State Grid Corp of China (SGCC).
Under the terms of the agreement, both firms aim to share resources in a move to reduce costs, increase efficiency and bring benefits for both industries.
China Tower Corp is a joint venture of China’s three telecom operators China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom, while SGCC is the country’s largest state-run electric utility company.
The deal stipulates that SGCC will share tower resources with China Tower Corp. The two partners will also cooperate in the telecommunications services field as well as in smart grid construction. They said that they will carry out pilot projects for sharing resources in telecommunications infrastructure and electricity.
“Power transmission towers owned by SGCC are all over China. Especially in the eastern region, the distribution density of our towers is relatively high,” said Shu Yinbiao, chairman of SGCC. “China Tower Corp has 2.5 million base stations, so there is great scope for cooperation just in tower sharing,” the executive added.
China Tower also signed a cooperation agreement with China Southern Power Grid, another State-owned electric utility, in a bid to share resources and establish regular cooperation.
The sharing of telecommunications towers will also accelerate the deployment of 5G and will also lower the construction costs of communication base stations, said Tong Jilu, general manager of China Tower.
According to Chinese press reports, feasibility studies and applications on power and communication infrastructure resource sharing have already been carried out by the companies in Fujian, Yunnan, Hainan and Hubei.
Keysight Technologies cooperates with China Mobile in the 5G field
In related news, Keysight Technologies said it is collaborating with China Mobile to develop 5G technologies that enable the world’s largest mobile operator to perform 5G radio frequency modeling and simulation.
Keysight’s SystemVue enables China Mobile to create realistic modeling and simulation of 5G RF systems to determine relevant performance metrics to apply to its network.
The company’s 5G NR software solutions cover the full product design cycle with simulation, signal creation and analysis, with uplink and downlink directions, providing transmitter and receiver simulation and test.
Last month, China Mobile announced plans to build what it claims to be the world’s largest 5G trial network. The operator said it will start 5G trials in five Chinese cities this year. The company will conduct outdoor field tests in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou and Wuhan, and aims to deploy more than 100 5G base stations in each city for the 5G tests.
The operator aims to deploy small-scale “apps demonstration” trials in a dozen other cities, including Beijing and Shenzhen. According to Liu Guangyi, CTO for terminal and wireless technology at China Mobile Research Institution, the trial networks will mostly run in the 3.5 GHz band.
Last year, the Chinese telco had announced plans to deploy more than 10,000 5G base stations by 2020. The telco also said that it expects to launch a pre-commercial 5G service in 2018.
