Shenzhen unveils new infrastructure expansion plan, with goal to add 10,000 5G base stations in 2023 to help boost digital economy

Shenzhen’s latest programme is in line with the MIIT’s focus on advancing the pace of 5G infrastructure buildout across China
The southern tech hub had more than 64,000 5G base stations installed at the end of December last year

Shenzhen

Xinmei Shen

Published: 7:00pm, 13 Feb 2023

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Shenzhen, China’s Silicon Valley and the richest city in southern Guangdong province, aims to add 10,000 5G base stations this year as part of a plan to bolster internet connectivity and digital economic activity in the metropolis, local authorities said on Saturday.

A digital infrastructure action plan published last week by the Shenzhen municipal government’s Industry and Information Technology Bureau involves upgrading 5G mobile services and attaining wider adoption of its Gigabit Ethernet fibre optic network, enabling the southern tech hub to become mainland China’s top city in terms of internet speed.

With 10,000 more 5G base stations, Shenzhen expects its average internet download speeds to reach 500 megabits per second, according to the bureau. The city had more than 64,000 5G base stations installed at the end of December, according to a report by the state-run People’s Daily.

Shenzhen will strive to get 40 per cent of residential households to adopt broadband connection with speeds of 1 gigabit per second or higher. Last year, only 15.6 per cent of all broadband users in the country had connection speeds higher than 1Gbps, according to telecommunications data published earlier this month by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT).

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China expands 5G network to over 1.15 million base stations, more than rest of the world combined

Shenzhen’s infrastructure action plan includes formulating 5G service industry standards and helping companies upgrade their content delivery networks (CDNs), which comprise servers distributed across different locations that reduce latency and load times.

Companies should use CDNs to improve user experience, the municipal government said. It added that the city may give away free cloud storage and internet data to citizens in certain “key digital economy districts”.

Shenzhen’s latest programme is in line with the MIIT’s focus on advancing the pace of 5G infrastructure buildout across China, as the country remains locked in a race with the US on next-generation mobile network development.

President Xi Jinping last year outlined his vision of a digital economy with 5G connectivity as its backbone and nationwide data management at its core for a country with the world’s largest internet, smartphone and e-commerce markets.

How the 5G era will change the world

While most people see 5G as a technical upgrade to 4G, the next-generation wireless system is expected to be a major building block of the fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0, that would accelerate the automation of traditional industries.

At the end of December, total reported 5G subscribers on Hong Kong-listed carriers China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicom reached 1.09 billion.

China had 2.31 million 5G base stations at the end of last year, even though nationwide 5G investments declined 2.5 per cent from 2021, according to the MIIT’s telecoms statistics.