5G Capital meant to turn Beijing into a “gigabit city”
Chinese vendor Huawei and China Unicom Beijing and Huawei have showed the progress of the “5G Capital” project, through which the partners aim to turn Beijing into a gigabit city able to support the emerging 5G use cases.
The partners said that building 5G networks that meets Beijing’s high standards is one of the main goals of the China Unicom Beijing and Huawei “5G Capital” project.
China Unicom Beijing and Huawei have recently organized a “snow experience tour” that features nearly 20 use-cases along the expressway, at the national alpine skiing centers in Beijing’s Yanqing District, and in Beijing’s outskirt Fuyukou village. The demo showcased uplink and downlink capabilities of 5G gigabit networks in both indoor and outdoor areas.
Yang Lifan, deputy general manager of China Unicom Beijing said: “We have built outstanding 5G networks for commercial rollout in Beijing. With smart operations based on a user-centric network assessment criteria released in May of 2020, we focused on new deployment, optimization, and maintenance to build 5G gigabit networks that guarantee a gigabit experience for a variety of use-cases.”
Ritchie Peng, president of Huawei’s 5G Product Line, added: “Since the project launched in April last year, we have been working with China Unicom Beijing on piloting and commercially rolling out 10 solutions, including MetaAAU, indoor ubiquitous gigabit, and super uplink. Together, we have established a global benchmark for 5G. We are very happy to see that China Unicom Beijing’s networks have been used in several experience tours this year, demonstrating strong 5G capabilities in bustling playgrounds, highways, mountains, and rural areas.”
Continuous 5G coverage has enabled China Unicom Beijing to provide 10 new 5G services to users travelling at 100 km/h on an expressway that includes tunnels. These services provide 5G ultra-fast upload and download, focus tracking of 5G live broadcasts, 5G sports game viewing, 5G cloud gaming, 5G real-time conferencing, voice calling over sports watches, health monitoring, and 5G in-vehicle network applications.
At the national alpine skiing center in the Yanqing District, China Unicom Beijing provides players and spectators with a range of smart services, including smart protection against COVID-19, real-time weather monitoring, 5G broadcast backpacks, push-to-talk over cellular (PoC) handheld terminals, material management, and 5G first aid to maximize the 5G uplink and downlink gigabit capabilities, the partners said.
As of the end of September, Chinese mobile operators had deployed a total of 45,700 5G base stations in China’s capital Beijing. According to data released by the Beijing Communications Administration, the city has over 12 million 5G users.
The report also indicated that every 10,000 people in Beijing enjoy nearly 20 5G base stations, ranking first in China.
The 5G network has covered the main downtown areas of the capital, the city’s central business district, as well as the Olympic sports center area, according to the report. At present, construction of 5G base stations has been completed at the venues for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games in Beijing’s northwestern Yanqing district, and 90% of the venues in downtown Beijing. Besides, all the 5G base stations along the Beijing-Chongli Expressway and the Beijing-Zhangjiakou high-speed railway have been already built.
