Shanghai reaches 92,000 5G base stations at end-February

5G subscribers account for 40.8% of the total mobile phone users in Shanghai

Chinese operators have already deployed 92,000 5G base stations in China’s financial hub Shanghai has a 92,000 5G base stations as of the end of February, Chinese news service Xinhua reported.

By the end of 2023, 38.5% of the city’s mobile communication base stations were 5G base stations.

The report also stated that Shanghai recorded a total of over 18.7 million 5G mobile phone users as of the end of last year, up nearly 40% year on year.

5G subscribers accounted for 40.8% of Shanghai’s total mobile phone users, according to the Shanghai Communications Administration.

Meanwhile, official data showed that more than 11.5 million households in Shanghai had access to the internet through fiber-optic cables in 2023, of which about 2.7 million households could browse the internet with a fixed broadband speed of 1,000 Mbps or above.

China had 11.6 million mobile communication base stations as of the end of last year, of which 3.4 million were 5G base stations. 5G base stations currently account for 29% of total mobile base stations in China. The ratio is 7.8 percentage points higher compared to the end of 2022.

The coverage penetration of 5G technology in China was expected to reach 90% as of the end of 2023, local newspaper Global Times recently reported, citing an executive from local carrier China Mobile.

Bian Yannan, deputy general manager of planning and construction department at China Mobile, had said that this penetration rate was expected to be achieved thanks to the deployment of 360,000 5G base stations during 2023.

China is expected to reach a 5G adoption rate of 90% by 2030, making it a world leader in this space, according to the GSMA’s Mobile Economy China 2024. The report predicted that by the end of 2024, the Asian country will surpass 1 billion 5G connections and that by 2030, the number will soar to 1.6 billion connections, contributing $260 billion to China’s GDP.

Additionally, the GSMA report found that mobile data traffic in China is expected to quadruple by the end of the decade and that there are now 1.28 billion unique mobile subscribers in China, representing a penetration rate of 88%. Further, the advanced cellular ecosystem now supports almost 8 million jobs in China and contributes $110 billion a year through taxation, and in 2023, operator revenues reached $225 billion. By the end of the decade, the annual economic contribution from China’s mobile sector is forecast to exceed $1 trillion, predicted the GSMA.