The latest Economic Operation of the Communication Industry from January to July 2023 released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology shows that as of the end of July, China has built a total of 3.055 million 5G base stations, accounting for 26.9% of the total number of mobile base stations. China has 695 million 5G mobile phone users, accounting for 40.6% of the total number of mobile phone users. The number of gigabit broadband access users reached 134 million, accounting for 21.7% of the total number of users.

Data shows that the three basic telecommunications companies achieved a cumulative business revenue of 1005.6 billion Chinese yuan from January to July, a year-on-year increase of 6.2%. Among them, cloud computing and big data revenue increased by 35.5% and 42.2% year-on-year respectively, while IoT business revenue increased by 25.7% year-on-year. The cumulative access traffic of mobile internet users nationwide reached 167.7 billion GB, a year-on-year increase of 14.7%.

In order to accelerate the development of 5G, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology stated that it will adhere to moderate advancement, actively promote the construction of 5G networks, continuously expand the breadth and depth of 5G network coverage, push forward the deep coverage of 5G networks in key scenarios in urban areas, and further extend to towns and rural areas.

It will carry out the special action of signal upgrading to comprehensively improve the quality of 5G network in key scenarios. Meanwhile, the Ministry will adhere to implementing policies based on different industries, expand the application scale in leading fields such as industry, mining, electricity, ports, and deeply explore typical application scenarios in pilot fields such as healthcare, education, culture and tourism. It will build an upgraded version of the “5G+Industrial Internet” development, and promote the construction of 5G factories by no less than 3000 enterprises this year. It will also strengthen the support of 5G application industry, vigorously promote the research and development of 5G lightweight (RedCap) technology, and advance the continuous cost reduction and scale up of 5G applications.