Based on multiple data and many application cases, several industry experts agreed that the 5G development of Chongqing has been at the forefront of China, according to the 2021 SCE 5G Innovation and Development Forum held in Chongqing.

Under the theme of 5G Heralds New Advances in Chongqing, experts and scholars from industries, universities, research institutes, and government and enterprise representatives gathered at the forum to offer suggestions on how Chongqing will accelerate the development of 5G.

China has formed the world's largest 5G user base

Over the past nearly two years since 5G was put into commercial use, China has moved faster and made positive progress in 5G network construction and 5G applications.

Due to the deep convergence with industries such as cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, 5G connects people and everything and has become a key infrastructure for the development of the digital economy. 

According to the forum, as of the end of August 2021, China had built more than one million 5G base stations, accounting for more than 70% of the world's total; 5G networks had covered all prefecture-level cities, including more than 95% of the urban and 35% of the township areas; the number of 5G terminal users had exceeded 400 million, forming the world's largest 5G user base.

At the same time, China's 5G application innovation cases had exceeded 10,000, empowering the industrial sector, medical care, education, transportation, and other fields.

One of China's first 5G application demonstration cities

As one of the first 5G scale networking and application demonstration cities in China, Chongqing has taken 5G as the basic, pioneering and strategic public infrastructure for implementing the innovation-driven development strategy led by big data intelligence in recent years.

This is to facilitate the construction of 5G networks further, promote the innovative development of 5G, and develop a 5G development ecosystem in Chongqing.

Up to now, the city has more than 10 5G base stations per 10,000 people, ranking first in western China; the 5G networks cover all key urban areas in the city, with more than 9 million 5G users.

Furthermore, 5G has been applied in UHD live streaming, VR, smart tourism, autonomous driving, smart diagnosis and treatment, smart warehousing and logistics, smart manufacturing, and industrial Internet, thus providing important support for the development of the digital economy in Chongqing.

For example, regarding smart diagnosis and treatment, in the First Affiliated Hospital of Chongqing Medical University, the medical intelligent image cloud platform developed by China Telecom Chongqing based on 5G and other technologies has deployed intelligent solutions to lung diseases on the cloud through the intelligent image cloud.

The platform enables the uploading of medical image data, AI diagnosis, return of diagnostic reports, and early warning of suspected COVID-19 cases.

China's leading autonomous driving company QCraft, together with partners, including China Mobile Chongqing, CiDi, and Tencent, has created the country's first 5G autonomous driving minibus fleet for the traffic scenario of a mountain city in Chongqing Liangjiang Collaborative Innovation Zone.

At present, the fleet has achieved trial operation on a 5-kilometer route from Liangjiang International Film City to Jihua Park in the Zone, providing transportation services for employees of enterprises and those who come to handle affairs in the Zone.

In terms of smart manufacturing, China Unicom Chongqing and Chongqing Millison Technologies Inc., using 5G networks, edge computing, the Smart Car, also known as automated guided vehicles (AGV), and other new technologies and advanced equipment, have built a demonstration factory for data collection and intelligent logistics application in the whole process of high-precision die-casting product manufacturing.

So far, the construction scenario of the first phase of the project has been completed, the numerical control rate of key equipment in the production site of the demonstration factory has reached 100%, the Internet penetration rate has surpassed 95%, and the comprehensive utilization rate of production equipment has been increased by more than 20%.

Contribution to global 5G development

"In recent years, the CPC Chongqing Municipal Committee and Chongqing Municipal People's Government have attached great importance to 5G development and made remarkable achievements in 5G network construction and converged application," said Han Xia, Chief Engineer of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

"I have been closely following the development of 5G in Chongqing," said Uwe Löwenstein, counselor of Radiocommunication Bureau, International Telecommunication Union. "I am glad to see that Chongqing has rolled out many 5G converged application scenarios while rapidly advancing 5G infrastructure construction. This is also a boon for 5G development in the world."