China’s Hunan province is planning to deploy around 22,000 5G base stations by the end of this year, according to local authorities in the region.
The Industry and Information Technology department of Hunan province said that during the first half of the year, the province built 10,986 5G base stations.
The province has been expediting the construction of 5G facilities and expanding the innovative applications of this technology to promote the development of related industries. The department further added that the provincial capital Changsha has built a large-scale cloud data center and is constructing a pilot zone for enterprises to innovate 5G applications on the industrial internet.
Earlier this year, the China Broadcasting Network (CBN) received approval to deploy a 5G network across 16 cities using a spectrum in 4.9GHz band. It plans to have a nationwide coverage by 2021 after it signed a deal with State Grid last year.
CBN is a broadcasting company headquartered in China. The telecom provider’s initial deployment will cover major cities such as Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai and Shenzhen among 12 others.
In last October, CNB started trialling standalone technology on the 700MHz band in Shanghai. The telecom provider is working on an investment worth $35.8 million for its 5G network.
CBN received its commercial 5G licence in June when the country’s big three telecom operators also received the licence. The operators are China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom.
China Mobile received a licence for 260MHz of spectrum across 2.6GHz and 4.8GHz bands. China Telecom and China Unicom each received 100MHz in 3.5MHz band — and they operate jointly for their 5G deployments.