Chinese operators added a total of 16.94 million 5G subscribers during February, according to monthly statistics published on the carriers’ websites.
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, added 4.19 million 5G subscribers in February.
The operator said it ended February with a total of 173.16 million 5G subscribers, compared to 15.4 million 5G customers in February 2020.
China Mobile’s overall mobile subscriber base was reported as 937.16 million at the end of February, down compared to 940.86 million in January.
The carrier has already deployed over 385,000 5G base stations nationwide, according to recent press reports. Yang Jie, chairman of China Mobile, reportedly said that the carrier finished its annual 5G network build-out target ahead of schedule and has built the world’s largest 5G SA network.
Meanwhile, rival operator China Telecom added a total of 6.2 million 5G subscribers in February to take its total 5G subscribers base to 103.37 million.
In February 2020, the Chinese carrier had 10.73 million subscribers in the 5G segment.
China Telecom’s overall mobile base amounted to 352.8 million subscribers at the end of February.
Also, China Unicom ended February with 84.5 million 5G subscribers, up from 77.95 million the previous month. China Unicom started to inform 5G statistics last month.
China Unicom reported an overall mobile base of with 306.33 million subscribers at the end of February, almost flat year-on-year.
China’s vice-minister of industry and information technology Liu Liehong recently said that a total of 718,000 5G base stations have been built in China, accounting for nearly 70% of the world’s total 5G sites.
During Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2021, government officials said that Chinese carriers have invested more than CNY260 billion ($40.2 billion) to build the world’s largest 5G network.
The Chinese government is also focusing on future 6G technology. According to a recent report by state-owned newspaper China Daily, the government and industry experts have outlined a plan to advance 6G technology between 2021 and 2025.
Yang Xiaowei, deputy head of the Cyberspace Administration of China said at a news briefing the country would accelerate R&D of 6G technologies and continue to construct a large-scale 5G network.
In May 2020, Chinese vendor ZTE and China Unicom had reached an agreement for the development of 6G technologies.
Based on China Unicom’s network, both companies announced a collaboration to jointly explore the prospect and technical trends of 6G. According to the industry, 6G technology is expected to be commercialized around 2030.
Under the terms of the agreement, ZTE and China Unicom announced plans to cooperatate on 6G technological innovation and standards while actively promoting the in-depth integration of 6G with satellite networks, the internet of things (IoT), the internet of vehicles, and industrial IoT.
Moreover, the two parties said they will conduct joint research on the potential key technologies of 6G, including three dimensional connectivity, terahertz communication, and the integrated communication and sensing. ZTE and China Unicom will also verify the feasibility of these technologies through both the verification tests and the prototyping trials to achieve the 6G network performance targets, such as the peak data rate of 1 Tbps, the user experienced data rate of 20 Gbps and the volume traffic capacity of 100Gbps/m3
