Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Hohhot, Nanjing, Wuxi, Changzhou, Suzhou, Hangzhou, Ningbo, Nanchang... Recently, the list of China's first 29 "Gigabit cities" was officially released, which attracted great attention from the industry. With the full opening of the era of digital economy, the "double Gigabit" network represented by 5G and gigabit optical network has become an important part and bearing base of new infrastructure. The implementation of "Gigabit cities" plays an important role in promoting local scientific and technological innovation, advancing information consumption and enabling the digital transformation of thousands of industries.

Speed up the construction of "double Gigabit" network

Network is an indispensable "cornerstone" to support the vigorous development of digital economy. At present, China attaches great importance to the construction of "double Gigabit" network represented by 5G and gigabit optical network. The 2021 government work report clearly proposes to strengthen the construction of 5G network and gigabit optical network and enrich application scenarios. Premier Li Keqiang presided over the executive meeting of the State Council and clearly proposed to build a Gigabit city.

In order to thoroughly implement the decisions and arrangements of the CPC Central Committee and the State Council and accelerate the construction and development of "double Gigabit" networks, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology officially issued The Action Plan for Coordinated Development of "Double Gigabit" Networks (2021-2023) in March 2021, which clearly proposed to basically build a "double Gigabit" network infrastructure covering cities and conditional townships in three years in a bid to realize that fixed and mobile networks generally achieve Gigabit to home. Subsequently, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology launch the evaluation of "Gigabit cities" and comprehensively accelerate the construction of "Gigabit cities".

At present, with the joint efforts of the whole industry, China's "double Gigabit" network construction has achieved remarkable results. From the perspective of 5G, as of November 2021, there were more than 1.396 million 5G base stations, and 5G network continued to deepen its coverage to counties and towns. From the perspective of gigabit optical network, 10G PON (10 Gigabit Passive Optical Network) ports supporting Gigabit access have reached 7.207 million, with the ability to cover more than 260 million households. The scale of Gigabit users has increased to 33.89 million, a net increase of 27.46 million over the end of 2020.

It is worth mentioning that while the urban network capacity continues to improve, China's rural network level is also significantly enhanced. By November 2021, China's existing administrative villages have fully realized "broadband access to villages", and the vast rural areas have successfully opened the information "artery" in the era of digital economy. At the same time, the innovation of "double Gigabit" technology is also speeding up. China has built the world's largest ultra-high speed 100G / 200G backbone network and will evolve and upgrade to 400G.

"Gigabit city" enables digital transformation

Network supports applications and applications boost transformation. In promoting the coordinated development of "double Gigabit", building a "Gigabit city" is of great significance. Today, with the significant improvement of 5G and gigabit optical network infrastructure capacity in some cities, the new generation of information and communication technology has accelerated its integration into thousands of industries, spawned various "double Gigabit" applications and enabled local digital transformation.

Judging from the construction achievements of the first batch of "Gigabit cities" in China, these "Gigabit cities" mainly focus on the fields of information consumption, industry integration and application, social and people's livelihood services and digital government, giving birth to applications of smart medicine, smart education, industrial manufacturing, smart transportation, smart city, port and mine, smart community and smart culture and tourism. These cover the main scenes of economic and social digital transformation.

With more and more applications put into use, the "Gigabit city" drives the transformation of local production mode, lifestyle and consumption mode. In Qingdao, Shandong Province, integrated applications such as the whole underground process in Shandong gold mine, automatic and refined household appliance product quality management of Qingdao Haier and 5G smart port application project of Qingdao port have been implemented, subverting the traditional production and management methods of enterprises and accelerating the digital transformation. In Shangrao, Jiangxi Province, WECO, an agricultural demonstration project, adopts the "dual intelligent system" of the Internet of things to achieve accurate and efficient control of crops in the park and create a new model of smart agriculture. In Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, "city level" intelligent center - urban brain, covering 15 application scenarios of parking, water, gas, emergency and others, significantly improving the level of urban governance.

At the same time, we should also see that the construction of "Gigabit city" is a systematic project. For the whole industry, the landing of the first batch of "Gigabit cities" is not the end but the starting point. The era of digital economy is fully open, and all parties in the industry should continue to promote the construction of 5G and gigabit optical networks, especially the "last 100 meters" of Gigabit to home.

Strengthening cooperation and achieving a wider range of collaborative innovation is also an important proposition. To promote the accelerated implementation of "Gigabit cities", we need not only the coordination of upstream and downstream of the industrial chain, but also the coordination of cross departments, cross industries and cross fields. How to unite the forces of all parties and build an integrated "ecology" of healthy and sustainable development is the focus of thinking and exploration of the whole industry.

At present, the whole society is accelerating towards digitalization, networking and intelligence. Facing the needs of future development, further consolidating the network "base" represented by 5G and gigabit optical network, and accelerating the implementation of "gigabit cities" will strongly support the digital transformation of all walks of life and boost high-quality economic and social development.