China Unicom has officially unveiled its strategic product, 5G LAN OmniLink. This cutting-edge product, along with its derivative infrastructure solutions, combines advanced technology with strong commercial viability, empowering enterprises to evolve from fragmented interconnectivity to comprehensive, collaborative ecosystems.
5G LAN OmniLink can address industry-specific needs by enhancing security in aerospace, finance, insurance, and healthcare; freeing operations from relying on physical wires in warehousing, logistics, energy, and mining; ensuring reliable communications for government, transportation, education, and banking; and offering affordable, scalable networking solutions for multi-location small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
5G LAN Breakthrough: Wide-Area Interconnection Allows for Industry Innovation
5G LAN OmniLink is an upgrade of China Unicom's 5G LAN Elite and realizes a nationwide integration beyond traditional campus networks. Harnessing the 5G LAN technology at its core, this product shatters the limitations of conventional networks by integrating geographically dispersed devices into a single, expansive VLAN, enabling seamless Layer 2 connectivity across vast distances. Enterprises can directly take advantage of built-in LAN features—like DHCP dynamic addressing, automatic network service discovery, and MAC address authentication—without overhauling their current infrastructure, while experiencing the familiar functionality of traditional LANs within a cutting-edge 5G framework.
What stands out about 5G LAN OmniLink is its application across four main scenarios, all while integrating five technological innovations, full-scenario terminals, and intelligent operation systems. It lays a new digital foundation featuring agile deployment, security, reliability, and elastic scalability for diverse industries. By unlocking the full potential of 5G across different verticals, it fuels the transformative growth and propels the "Set Sail" action plan for 5G applications.
Scenario Innovation: Four Network Solutions to Tackle Digitalization Pain Points
5G simplified private networks offer unparalleled data protection. In the aerospace, finance, insurance, and healthcare sectors, 5G LAN OmniLink is applied to build a simplified, secure private network with the help of a 5G wide-area private network architecture. This allows for a complete physical separation from the Internet. The design helps keep data within the private network, eliminating external connectivity risks at their source. For instance, an aerospace enterprise utilized China Unicom's wide-area 5G LAN technology to establish a secure Layer 2 interconnection network. This allows the real-time transfer of flight test data, and remote device control between the enterprise's Shanghai and Beijing research centers—all without data exposure or relay on Internet. Similarly, a leading logistics company adopted this network solution to safeguard the transmission of operational and inspection data to its headquarters, achieving industrial-grade data security while maintaining flexibility for future device expansions. This robust Layer 2 architecture delivers a blend of security and scalability, tailored to meet the stringent demands of high-stakes sectors.
5G simplified, flexible private networks allow efficient deployment with stronger security. China Unicom has launched this network solution—powered by wide-area 5G LAN—to serve industries such as warehousing and logistics, power grids, and mining and metallurgy, providing flexible, secure, and efficient networking for enterprises. The solution supports the rapid, on-demand establishment of temporary secure channels, requiring zero modifications to existing enterprise intranets. It significantly lowers both deployment barriers and security risks. Using Timweao (Shanghai) Network Technology as an example, the company has integrated wide-area 5G LAN into operational scenarios such as remote repairs, factory audits, and process validation. With this solution, a Layer 2 direct network channel is established between the AR glasses used at the repair site in Beijing and the terminals of the remote experts in Shanghai. The solution can deliver smooth, uninterrupted audio and video communication on this channel, boosting the efficiency of individual repair tasks by 23%. According to estimates, if enterprise experts take an average of 20 business trips per year, the solution can help save over CNY 100,000 annually in travel and time-related costs for a meaningful cost reduction.
5G simplified redundancy networks allow connectivity across critical industries. Tailored toward sectors such as government, transportation, education, and banking, this network solution utilizes a hybrid fixed-mobile mutual backup architecture. This allows the solution to secure wireless connectivity redundancy for branch offices across towns, cities, counties, and remote regions, achieving full coverage of grassroots-level services. For example, in a civil aviation departure system, wide-area 5G LAN has been used to build a cross-domain Layer 2 private network, enabling nationwide Layer 2 connectivity between terminals at subsidiary airports and the data center. The network has covered more than 40 airport branches across China, providing stable support for backup and backhaul of departure service data. Until now, the network has had zero service interruptions while dramatically reducing network construction costs—56% lower compared to traditional networking. With its flexible, efficient, and streamlined deployment, the network solution lowers the impact of unexpected network incidents and reinforces cybersecurity for critical industries.
5G enterprise interconnection private networks offer cross-domain support for MSMEs. Designed for MSMEs such as chain stores, design firms, and law offices, this network solution leverages native 5G Layer 2 interconnection technology to deliver a low-cost, plug-and-play enterprise-grade networking solution. It enables secure intranet deployment without complex configuration. For instance, the headquarters of a prominent milk tea chain has adopted China Unicom's wide-area 5G LAN to deploy a unified digital solution across its nationwide chain stores. Unlike traditional wired connectivity methods, this approach enables ultra-simplified, plug-and-play deployment, eliminating the need for complex network configurations or rebuilt infrastructure. It can efficiently address core service needs such as in-store video surveillance and cross-store inventory data sharing. The network solution not only precisely addresses the challenge of frequent cross-regional collaboration among chain stores, but also—with its lightweight design of "zero modification, zero maintenance"—provides a plug-and-play network foundation for the digital transformation of MSMEs. This makes possible the accelerated digital implementation of service scenarios.
Technical Breakthrough: Five Core Capabilities for Wide-Area 5G Layer 2 Networking
Cross-area interconnection: Seamless and intelligent connectivity across all involved areas. This allows for flexible networking covering intra-city, intra-province, and cross-province scenarios, overcoming geographic limitations. It also helps build an intelligent connection network covering all areas of an enterprise. Besides this, it drastically reduces deployment costs, shortens the network provisioning period, and fuels the upgrade towards digital network architectures.
Native security: Physical isolation protection system. As IP addresses may be exposed to external systems in SD-WAN public network–based data transmission, a private network is constructed for higher security. This network prevents data exposure to the public network, protects data against external attacks, and ensures that data is directly transmitted through an E2E Layer 2 private network without intermediate forwarding.
Simplified deployment: Plug-and-play and zero reconstruction. The lightweight "5G number card plus 5G CPE" product portfolio is used. As such, existing enterprise intranets do not need to be reconstructed, and no routing security devices need to be added. Besides this, services can be rapidly provisioned by simply inserting a SIM card and powering on terminals, requiring no IT support.
Dual fed and selective receiving: Industrial-grade reliable transmission. As radio links are unstable, dual links are used for parallel transmission, and the optimal selective receiving mechanism is adopted to significantly reduce the packet loss rate and latency and eliminate jitter. This helps build an industrial-grade, highly reliable transport network for service continuity.
Convergence with RedCap: Cost-effective IoT access. The RedCap technology simplifies hardware design and reduces device costs and power consumption. It also provides cost-effective connectivity solutions for low- and medium-rate IoT scenarios such as smart metering and smart security surveillance in order to promote large-scale 5G deployment.
Full-scenario Terminal Matrix Drives Industry Digitalization
China Unicom has launched three types of terminals to adapt to industry- and scenario-specific needs.
Enterprise terminals support multiple access protocols, fixed-mobile mutual backup, and VPN security and encryption capabilities, and provide plug-and-play and remote batch O&M functions. They are designed to meet reliable, high-speed networking requirements in scenarios such as enterprise buildings and retail stores.
Enterprise gateway products
Office terminals are portable 5G wireless devices that provide multiple access approaches for mobile office and interconnection. This effectively addresses the pain points of poor portability, heavy electrical wiring and cabling workload, and slow network speed.
Office terminal products
Industrial terminals are gateways, routers, and intelligent computing terminals designed for data collection, edge collaborative computing, protocol conversion, and remote intelligent O&M. They mainly apply to three scenarios such as onsite industrial data collection, network transmission, and remote control.
Industrial gateway products
Looking towards the future and driven by a customer-centric philosophy, China Unicom will continue to explore the cutting edge of 5G technologies. This company will build a more efficient, intelligent, and reliable 5G private network product matrix, one that can lead the coordination and advancement of both 5G technologies and the real economy.