PRESS RELEASE: During MWC Shanghai, the 5G New Momentum Roundtable gathered representatives of global operators to discuss network strategies and technical directions. Fan Bin, Director of China Unicom’s Network Department, shared their experience in driving scenario-based 5G-A network innovation.
In the past five years since 5G has been commercialized, China Unicom has built the world’s largest and fastest 5G SA shared network with China Telecom. The network now provides continuous 5G coverage in dense-urban, urban, suburban areas and towns as well as 90% of rural villages in China. The network also delivers ubiquitous 5 Gbps downlink and 1 Gbps uplink by leveraging large-bandwidth spectrum and mid-/low-band collaboration.
With glorious 5G achievements over the past five years, China Unicom is now embracing 5G-A. Fan noted that technical capabilities evolve to cater for diverse services in both the existing and future forms, so it is important to align these capabilities with the service requirements in different scenarios. Carrying forward their experience in 5G construction to 5G-A, China Unicom has widely implemented 5G-A in scenarios like large-capacity settings, high-speed railways, manufacturing, maritime and low-altitude coverage.
For high-speed railways, high mobility, penetration loss, and traffic surge are key challenges. China Unicom has deployed TDD+FDD networks on 3.5 GHz and 2.1 GHz along trunk high-speed railway lines in China to safeguard consistent and stable capacity and coverage. For sea areas, long-distance coverage is a top issue. China Unicom has opted for FDD Massive MIMO to extend coverage to 100 km. For capacity-hungry areas, China Unicom has leveraged full-band large-bandwidth devices spanning 3.5 GHz 300 MHz and FDD mid-band 95 MHz to reach a peak throughput of over 7 Gbps. Additionally, they adopt Distributed Massive MIMO to increase system capacity by four times and improve user experience by 30% compared with cell combination.
Fan reiterated the company’s determination to explore innovative applications of 5G-A in a wider range of industrials based on market requirements. In terms of ubiquitous IoT, China Unicom attaches equal importance to coordinated development of devices, networks, and services in order to accelerate the implementation of service applications. They have launched the world’s first commercial RedCap module – Yan Fei – and completed the device-network service verification in Shanghai, in effort of diversifying the supply of terminal products together with industry partners. They have commercially launched RedCap 5G-A in hundreds of cities in China and worked with partners to complete dozens of service application demonstrations. For scenarios requiring low latency and high reliability, China Unicom has achieved 4 ms latency and 99.999% reliability for network transmission. This is attributable to one industrial innovation — China’s first commercial 5G-A flexible production line jointly built by China Unicom and Exquisite Automotive, where it takes 90% less time to switch a production line for a new vehicle model. For integrated communication and sensing, China Unicom is also a leader. They have brought all-weather full communication and sensing synergy to China, making it available for low-altitude, V2X, coal mine, and other scenarios.
“China Unicom envisions upgrading our networks and exploring 5G-A applications in different scenarios to build differentiated competitiveness and contribute to the global digital economy,” concluded Fan.