On April 9, the Chongqing Municipal People's Government held a video and telephone conference on the crucial work of 5G network construction, during which this year's 5G construction tasks were deployed. Particularly, this year will see 30,000 5G base stations, which will be completed before June 30. In the next three years, Chongqing will allocate over RMB 30 billion to build 100,000 5G base stations.

Southwest China's Chongqing Municipality is to build 30,000 5G base stations by the end of June. (Photo by Yang Ye)

Up to now, about 3,000 5G base stations have been newly built throughout the city, with 27,000 to be added in 80 days. This means that, on average, over 300 5G base stations will have to be built per day.

The relevant person in charge of the Chongqing Communication Administration introduced that to ensure the completion of this year's 5G base station construction tasks as scheduled, Chongqing will make every effort to further 5G network construction from six aspects. Attempts should be made to set up 5G construction offices, implement projects, strengthen co-building and sharing, highlight safe production, enhance supervision and motivation, and use big data platforms for network-wide scheduling.

While accelerating the construction of 5G base stations, this year, Chongqing will carry out demonstration and pilot projects to promote the application of the 5G network. According to the conference, this year, Chongqing will actively facilitate 5G applications such as AR/VR, 4K/8K, live streaming of games, game entertainment, and virtual shopping. Chongqing will also implement the "5G + targeted poverty alleviation in sanitation and health" and "5G + Industrial Internet" 512 Project, and drive the coordinated development of "5G + Internet of Vehicles". Apart from that, Chongqing will organize the 5G high-end forum of the China Smart City International Expo 2020, and create cloud services, open platforms, and application development environments, enhancing its capability of 5G innovation. By drawing on the experience of developing 5G in Beijing, Guangdong and other provinces and municipalities, Chongqing will accelerate the allocation of phone numbers for 5G mobiles, propel the 5G final consumption, accelerate the transfer of users to 5G network, and advance the increase of 5G users through measures such as package upgrade promotion and cellphone purchasing with credit guarantee.

With the concerted efforts of all parties, 10,000 5G base stations came to fruition in 2019, accounting for about 8% of the country's total amount and ranking among the top of the country. Currently, Chongqing is home to 675,000 5G users.