Chinese operators have already deployed a total of 916,000 5G base stations, accounting for 70% of the world’s total, according to Chinese newspaper Global Times.
Also, according to data provided by the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), the number of 5G-connected devices in China has exceeded 365 million now, making up 80% of the world’s total.
Earlier this week, Chinese government agencies jointly issued a three-year 5G action plan aiming to significantly improve 5G development in the country, according to the report.
Ten departments including the MIIT, the Cyberspace Administration of China and the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) jointly issued a three-year 5G action plan with the goal of advancing the adoption of 5G technology in China.
The three-year action plan sets the goal to reach over 560 million 5G users by 2023, with the penetration rate of 5G technology exceeding 40% among Chinese users.
China Mobile, the world’s largest operator in terms of subscribers, added 16.65 million 5G subscribers in May, according to the carrier’s latest available figures.
The carrier said it ended last month with 221.95 million 5G subscribers, compared to 55.60 million 5G customers in May 2020.
The Chinese operator has already deployed over 385,000 5G base stations nationwide, according to previous press reports.
Meanwhile, Chinese operator China Unicom said it added a total of 7.53 million 5G subscribers during May.
The telco ended May with 106.1 million 5G subscribers, up from 98.56 million the previous month. China Unicom started to provide 5G statistics earlier this year.
Rival operator China Telecom added 6.72 million 5G subscribers in May to take its total 5G subscribers base to 124.49 million.
China is forecast to reach 739 million 5G subscribers by 2025, according to a recent study by ABI Research. This figure would represent nearly 40% of the global market share in the 5G segment.
In terms of the annual mobile data consumption, the 5G annual data traffic in China is forecast to reach 782 exabytes by 2025, representing a share of nearly 60% of the world’s total 5G data consumption.
