GUANGZHOU and Shenzhen will be the first two 5G-covered cities in Guangdong Province, and 5G network services are planned to be launched in the cities’ densely populated areas this year, the Shenzhen Economic Daily reported.

According to this year’s provincial government work report, Guangdong will speed up 5G applications and commercialization in Pearl River Delta cities in 2019.

The province will invest 1.8 billion yuan (US$160.4 million) in the 5G network construction project undertaken by China Mobile’s Guangdong branch, which will build 2,702 5G base stations in densely populated areas in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in 2019.

Meanwhile, a data transmission hub project undertaken by China Aviation Cloud Holding Group will also be launched this year and is expected to be completed in five years.

Relying on key big data and cloud technologies, data interaction centers will be built in Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Foshan, Dongguan and Zhongshan to construct an international data transmission hub.

As a renewal project, the Shenzhen Asia-Pacific high-throughput broadband satellite communication system is also on top of Guangdong’s agenda. The project, with an intended investment of 500 million yuan, is expected to be completed in 2021.

Guangdong has been pushing 5G applications with increasing efforts. On Friday, Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport launched a 5G base station and became the first 5G-covered airport in the country, according to Xinhua News Agency.

The base station was built by China Unicom’s Guangzhou branch and uses Huawei’s 5G Lampsite, an in-depth radio coverage solution that supports indoor deployment in large to medium-sized sites.

The speed of the network can reach 1.14 gigabytes per second, around 50 times faster than the current 4G network, according to a test. (Zhang Yu)