PARTNER CONTENT: A total of 35 cities and regions in China jointly held a ceremony on June 6 to celebrate the introduction of 5G-Advanced (5G-A) services, with the timing coinciding with the 5th anniversary of the government issuing 5G licences.

The 2024 High Quality Development Forum for mobile communications was held at the Zhongguancun International Innovation Center in Beijing, with the aim of promoting the evolution of 5G technology and application innovation, and driving a shift to 5G-enabled smart cities.

The 5G-A rollout covered major cities including Beijing, Tianjin, Harbin, Chengdu, Xi’an, and Shenzhen.

The availability of 5G-A with 3GPP Release 18 is another key 5G milestone, particularly for IoT delivery, providing the catalyst for new 5G investment throughout 2024 and into 2025. New advancements support non-terrestrial networks, industrial automation, broadcast services, and network slicing.

In late March, China Mobile launched the world’s first commercial 5G-A network, turning on the service in Shanghai, where nearly 150,000 households were soon connected to the new technology. China Mobile Shanghai demonstrated downlink and uplink rates of 5 Gbps and 500 Mbps, respectively, with speeds up to ten times higher than 5G networks.

Three special packages
At the end of June – during MWC Shanghai – China Mobile also released three very special 5G Advanced packages. And the initial 1,000 subscribers can enjoy a one-year package for free!

The 5G-A Business Travel Package offers up to 3Gbps downlink speeds and 200 Mbps uplink, plus 100-minute access to the AI Shorthand function as part of the 5G New Calling services, as well as cloud PC and DragonPass VIP travel services, for just CNY30 per month.

The 5G-A Livestreaming Package is offered at just CNY20 per month and includes 5G New Calling, audiovisual entertainment, and cloud phone with up to 2 Gbps downlink speeds and 150 Mbps uplink.

And the 5G-A Gaming Package costs CNY20 per month and includes a gaming background music offering, cloud phone, and Migu Fun gaming membership, with up to 2Gbps downlink speeds and 150 Mbps uplink.

5G-A network coverage
Shanghai’s upgraded network reaches areas within the outer ring road, fully covering the main urban areas and backbone roads in the city, and enbles the country’s first 5G-A subway line.

China Mobile Shanghai announced on May 16, the World Telecommunications Day,that  it was the first to build a 5G A² Demonstration City, combining AI and 5G-A. 

Aggressive push
China Mobile plans to deliver 5G-A connectivity to more than 300 cities by the endof 2024.

To promote the development of the 5G-A ecosystem, the operator, together with multiple industry partners, also established the 5G-A Industry Alliance. The country’s largest mobile player is now pushing numerous achievements in content applications, technology platforms, and ecosystem capabilities.

The groundwork for the country’s network upgrade started in 2023 and accelerated in January, with network construction and application exploration carried out across 35 cities and regions.

For example, Beijing’s three-year action plan for promoting 5G-A technology evolution and application innovation released in January proposed building or reconfiguring more than 4,000 5G-A base stations in 2024, with nearly 2,000 already installed.

By 2026, the city aims to have more than 20,000 5G-A base stations to create a “dual 10-gigabit benchmark city”, using mobile and fiber technologies.

After five years of deploying 5G infrastructure, the country’s four mobile players deployed a total of 3.75 million 5G base stations as of April 2024.

A Mobile Economy report by GSMA revealed the number of 5G connections in China surpassing 800 million, accounting for 45% of total mobile connections by the end of 2023. Meanwhile, fixed-line broadband users in China reached 647 million at the end of March, of which 177 million were gigabit users, accounting for 27.4% of total users, according to China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

MIIT figures indicate commercial 5G directly contributed to a total economic output of CNY5.6 trillion (US$788 billion) over the past five years. 

Global scope
The next five years will see accelerated integration of 5G with various sectors, and pave the way for 6G that is expected by the end of the decade, a  representative suggested.

Compared with 5G, 5G-A features significantly higher data rates, delivering peak downlink speeds of up to 10 Gbps and average speeds of 5 Gbps

The technology also will expand IoT technologies and applications to make them more lightweight and ubiquitous. Reduced capability (RedCap) devices, for example, support medium-speed low-latency IoT. 

The upgrade to 5G-A increases the ability to monetize enterprise and consumer applications by introducing low-power IoT with RedCap, FWA broadband, and a range of higher bandwidth streaming and entertainment categories that can tap extended reality (XR).

Global 5G deployment is now well underway, with 261 5G networks already in commercial use and more than 1.6 billion connections by the end of 2023, according to GSMA Intelligence. It expects 5G networks to cover one-third of the world’s population by 2025.

China’s 5G connection base is also forecast to top 1.6 billion by 2030, accounting for around a third of the global total, with a growing number of 5G-A connections. GSMA Intelligence predicts data usage of 5G customers in the Chinese mainland will jump from 13 GB to 54 GB per month by the end of the decade (23% growth a year) as subscribers use more bandwidth-intensive apps.