Chinese operator ended November with 771 million 5G users
Chinese operators have installed a total of 3.28 million 5G base stations nationwide as of the end of November, local press reported citing official data.
The figure accounted for 28.5% of China’s total mobile base stations, according to data revealed by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
Also, China Telecom, China Unicom and China Mobile ended November with a total of 1.73 billion users in the mobile telephony segment. Of that total, 771 million were 5G mobile phone users, a net increase of 210.4 million from the end of 2022, accounting for 44.7% of total mobile phone users.
A recent report laid out how China’s telecommunication industry experienced a steady expansion from January to October, according to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.
The combined revenues of firms operating in the domestic telecom sector totaled CNY 1.42 trillion ($199 billion), up 6.9% year-on-year, the report showed.
Of the total, emerging sectors such as cloud computing, big data, the internet of things and internet data centers saw their revenues increase by 20.5% year-on-year to CNY301.2 billion.
Broadband internet services recorded revenues of CNY219 billion in the first ten months, climbing 9.3% year-on-year.
China aims to start commercializing 6G technology by 2030 and expects that the standard-setting for the technology will be achieved around 2025, according to Wang Zhiqin, the head of China’s 6G promotion team and vice president of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology.
Wang recently noted that China began 6G technological experiments last year and has been carrying research on 6G system architecture and technical solutions during 2023.
In June, the country’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said that the Chinese government allocated spectrum in the 6 GHz frequency band for 5G and 6G services. The 6 GHz spectrum is the only high-quality resource with large bandwidth in the mid-band, taking into account its coverage and capacity advantages, the ministry said, noting that the 6 GHz range is particularly suitable for the deployment of 5G systems or 6G systems in the future.
The ministry noted that the allocation of the 6 GHz band at this time is “conducive to stabilizing the expectations of the 5G/6G industry.”
In a blog published during MWC23 Shanghai, GSMA’s head of spectrum Luciana Camargos highlighted the fact that China had identified the upper part of the 6 GHz band for International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT) systems.
“China’s efforts towards the 6 GHz band don’t come as a surprise. Conducive spectrum policies for the mid-bands, especially the 2.6 GHz and 3.5 GHz, have helped China to deploy the world’s largest 5G network and to be on track to become the first country to reach 1 billion 5G connections in 2025,” Camargo said.
