Shanghai, a cosmopolitan city on China's eastern coast, has been at the vanguard of China's opening up and reform for over a century. It is a kaleidoscope of cultures and a hub of innovation.
On May 17, the World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, Shanghai witnessed another big event. That is, China Mobile Shanghai (Shanghai Mobile), Huawei, and other industry leaders disclosed their objective to build a "5G A2Demonstration City" (where A2 stands for Advanced x AI), rolled out a series of 5G-A commercial products, and initiated the establishment of a5G-A ecosystem alliance, and also unveiled the 5G-A industrial Internet lab. These measures charted a new course for digital and intelligent transformation of cities, bringing intelligence to thousands of households and industries and offering a solid foundation and a power support for better city governance, economics, and living.
5G-A has ushered in a new era for urban development. As outlined in Action Plan for Further Promoting New Infrastructure Construction in Shanghai(2023-2026), Shanghai strives to pioneer the "Global Dual 10-Gigabit City", which entails the initial establishment of a city distinguished by5G-A and 10-Gigabit optical networks. It aims to become one of the cities with the fastest network speed, a diverse range of infrastructure types, and the lowest latency. To spearhead the adoption of 5G-A, Shanghai Mobile has proactively planned and taken on a series of initiatives.
China's Leading 5G-A Network Helps Build a "5G A2 Demonstration City"
The to-be-frozen 3GPP (Release 18), technical upgrade requirements on the road towards 6G, as well as the industry's service innovation and promotion desires make 5G-A a deterministic direction. 5G-A unlocks infinite potentials for our life and production, as it achieves a tenfold improvement in the capabilities of existing networks and introduces revolutionary technologies such as integrated sensing and communications, passive IoT, and intrinsic intelligence.
"The future enters into us in this way in order to transform itself in us long before it happens", wrote Rainer Maria Rilke, who is hailed as the most outstanding lyric poet of the20th century. On last year's World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, Shanghai Mobile announced the construction of the first smart city featuring 5G-A networks with speeds of up to 10 Gbit/s, wide coverage, deeper penetration, and innovative services. This showcases its insight and determination to build a powerful network in Shanghai.
Over the past year's growth, Shanghai has taken the lead in 5G-A network construction in China. In the perspective of scale, Shanghai Mobile has adopted a 260 MHz spectrum of2.6G+4.9G and, in collaboration with Huawei, has launched the world's largest commercial 5G-A 3CC network. With over a thousand sites deployed, the network achieves 100% coverage of 5G-A signals in famous landmarks, ten key scenarios, express ways and major roads in main urban areas. This includes the Shanghai Tower's observatory on the 118th floor at a vertical height of 546 meters, as well as popular tourist spots like Lujiazui, The Bund, Yuyuan Garden, and China's first fully covered 5G-A subway line. In the perspective of experience, the downlink peak rate can reach 5 Gbit/s, with an average rate of 2.5 Gbit/s, and the uplink peak rate exceeds 500 Mbit/s. This ensures the quality of experience for emerging and popular services such as glasses-free 3D, XR cloud gaming, and high-definition live streaming. In the perspective of application, Shanghai Mobile, together with its partners, has rolled out multiple innovative benchmark applications, including smart metro communications, the Internet of Vehicles (IoV) in Jinqiao, Pudong, low-altitude flight communications in Jinshan District, the industrial Internet of Shanghai Faith, dedicated experience areas in nearby water towns, and an agricultural information management platform. In summary, the high uplink bandwidth, low latency, and deterministic network characteristics of the 5G-A network well meet the demands of vertical industries.
On this year's World Telecommunication and Information Society Day, Shanghai Mobile was the first of its kind to announce the building of a "5G A2 Demonstration City." Powering 5G-A with AI will inject new momentum into the city's energy and sharpen its core competitive edge. First, the penetration of AI capabilities enhances the intrinsic intelligence of the 5G-A network, achieving refined user experience assurance and self network optimizations and operations. Second, powering 5G-A with AI in areas such as intelligent vehicle networking, intelligent low-altitude communications, and intelligent manufacturing will also transform and empower various industries, bringing significant commercial and social value. Third, the 5G-A 10 Gbit/s network will become an intelligent computing base integrated with computing power. Individual consumers and industry users can access the 5G-A network to utilize computing power resources anytime, anywhere.
Looking towards the future, Shanghai Mobile will continue to work with Huawei to gradually achieve full5G-A network coverage in the main urban area of about 620 square kilometers, and accelerate the growth of network service capabilities (10 Gbit/s downlink and 1 Gbit/s uplink). In addition, it will work with industry-wide partners including Huawei to build a converged base using 5G-A, computing power, and vertical models to offer "10 Gbit/s converged intelligence and on-demand computing power".
5G-A Commercialization Starts, Revolutionizing Our Life and Production
On March 28, China Mobile announced the world's first commercial 5G-A launch, kicking off its plan to deploy 5G-A at scale. Shanghai is one of the first cities to deploy 5G-A networks, covering almost 150,000 users already. On that day, Shanghai Mobile also released four5G-A service packages, six types of terminals, seven AI+ family products, and multiple types of privileges, marking Shanghai the first city in China to release 5G-A service packages and meeting citizens' desire for a better digital life.
C114 learned that the four service packages include two monthly experience packages and two add-on experience packages. These packages allow users to enjoy faster mobile network services with a lower latency than regular users under the same network conditions, making themselves stay ahead of others on experiencing the next-generation mobile network. In addition to data and call plans, the packages include privileges on gigabit broadband, whole-home Wi-Fi, etc.
Besides, Shanghai Mobile, in collaboration with terminal manufacturers, released two glasses-free 3D terminals and four5G-A smartphones. The glasses-free 3D terminals are powered by AI technology, allowing users to watch Migu videos featuring ultra-realistic 3D images on high-speed, low-latency 5G-A networks. Shanghai Mobile also released seven AI+ family products, including 5G New Calling (Real-Time Translation, Auto Transcription, etc.), AI Store (mobile cloud drive), intelligent generation app for video ring back tones, cloud computer with automatic document generation and code assistant capabilities, and AI self-diagnosis for mobile healthcare. These products, developed using the 5G-A network and AI technology, will further enhance work efficiency and provide more engaging entertainment experiences as AI functionalities continue to evolve with large AI models.
Besides, Shanghai Mobile has made every effort to bring premium benefits to all aspects of users' life, from super video membership applicable on mainstream applications, joint membership with fruit retailing chain stores, to the DragonPass travel privilege. Shanghai Mobile has announced plans to expand the GoTone package users and allow all GoTone users to natively enjoy eight exclusive services, including 5G-A network access, and other preferential treatments.
For the industry development, Shanghai Mobile has partnered with the China Mobile Research Institute, the China Mobile (Shanghai) Industry Research Institute, and industry chain partners to jointly establish a 5G-A industrial Internet lab using China Mobile's collaborative innovation base platform. The lab is focused on researching 5G-A deterministic network technologies, developing and piloting flexible industrial production-line solutions, and providing ultra-low latency and highly reliable network services for factories. Furthermore, the lab has adapted 5G-A networks to common industrial control protocols. This means that5G-A networks can be used for core production services and to drive new industrialization.
A Demonstration Example Is Set to Foster the Development of New Quality Productive Forces
As commercialization gains a growth momentum, trial implementations and commercial deployments are proliferating, and new scenarios and use cases are also emerging. In this context, 5G-A has become one of the vital catalysts for new quality productive forces, and its fusion with AI will unleash unparalleled potential and opportunities for the development.
Shanghai Mobile's concerted efforts enable Shanghai to have a sneak peek into 5G-A. This significantly accelerates the development of Shanghai's "five centers" objective and also helps transform Shanghai into a globally influential digital city with enhanced capabilities. Moreover, this sets a typical model for 5G-A development nationwide, paving the way for widespread application of 5G-A across China.
With the rapid construction of the"5G A2 Demonstration City" and continuous improvement of5G-A network coverage and experience, Shanghai Mobile is poised to continue its success in the 5G era, elevating the digitalization and intelligence across individuals and industries to new heights. Shanghai will also play the strongest role in the commercial use of 5G-A in China and even across the world.