GUANGDONG Province is taking the lead in the construction of 5G base stations in China with 21,473 completed before the end of September.

Among the stations, Guangzhou completed 10,626 and Shenzhen 9,504. It is estimated that the total number of 5G base stations will reach 34,800 before the end of the year, according to a report by Shenzhen Economic Daily quoting a source from Guangdong’s industry and information department.

The province’s telecommunications operators have invested 11 billion yuan (US$1.57 billion) in 5G network construction. Foshan and Dongguan also completed 619 and 398 base stations, respectively. Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Dongguan and Foshan have also started the construction of intelligent poles, with 4,247 posts already built.

Regarding commercial deployment, Guangdong has completed 250 5G+ application scenarios, such as hi-fi video, intelligent medical treatment and intelligent agriculture, and has set up eight 5G+ industrial Internet demonstration parks.

The province will speed up the implementation of a “5G application project,” which is to build 10 5G exhibition areas, 100 5G vertical application demonstration fields and 1,000 5G application demonstration enterprises. The development of core 5G technologies will be given priority, especially the medium-to-high frequency widgets that will replace the imported ones.

Meanwhile, Shenzhen-based telecom giant Huawei said Friday that it had obtained China’s first 5G network access license for base stations issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

It marks that the company’s 5G base stations are officially connected to the public commercial telecom networks, proving it could support China’s large-scale 5G rollout, Huawei said on its official WeChat account.

Adopting Massive MIMO technology, Huawei’s 5G equipment can serve all-scenario 5G network coverage and meet the growing capacity demand, providing its users with 5G experience, including ultra high- definition video and AR/VR, the company said.

Huawei’s 5G equipment can support both SA and NSA 5G networks. NSA networks are based on the existing 4G infrastructure, while SA networks require newer infrastructure tailored for 5G Internet.

The company has been making headway in securing more 5G commercial contracts globally despite the U.S. ban since May.

It has signed more than 60 commercial contracts for 5G with global carriers and shipped more than 400,000 5G base stations to global markets, the company said earlier this month.

(Han Ximin)