China’s 5G Base Station Count Tops 5 Million by Late April amid Steady Network Rollout

May 27 — Xinhua News Agency releases official communication industry data compiled by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, marking sustained expansion of China’s nationwide fifth-generation mobile communication infrastructure throughout the opening four months of the current year.

Official tallies confirm the national stock of operational 5G base stations hit 5.009 million units by the close of April. The network recorded a net addition of 171,000 new sites from the final day of the previous calendar year, with 5G infrastructure now accounting for 38.7 per cent of the country’s full mobile base station inventory; this proportion climbs 0.5 percentage points compared with readings taken at the end of the first quarter. 

Matching the growth in physical network hardware, the domestic pool of active 5G mobile subscribers reaches 1.262 billion, a net rise of 57.58 million new users since the turn of the year and making up roughly 68 per cent of all mobile phone accounts nationwide.

Parallel progress unfolds across fixed broadband digital infrastructure during the same monitoring window. The nation’s stock of 10G PON ports capable of delivering gigabit-speed residential and commercial broadband expands steadily to support coordinated development between wireless and wired digital networks, forming an integrated backbone for cross-industry digital transformation across urban and rural administrative regions. 

Operators continue filling regional coverage gaps, extending stable 5G connectivity to remote mountain villages, pastoral zones and offshore island settlements that previously faced limitations on high-speed digital access.

Physical network expansion underpins fast-growing practical adoption across core economic sectors. Existing 5G-powered deployments stretch across over seventy per cent of China’s major industrial classifications, covering intelligent mining, automated port handling, precision agricultural management and smart manufacturing workshops across provincial territories. 

Field-level implementations include remote equipment monitoring at inland oilfield sites, sensor-linked smart paddy farming that cuts routine field inspection workloads and real-time data transmission supporting emergency telemedicine services in geographically isolated counties.

Telecommunications regulators and major network carriers lay out phased construction schedules for subsequent months. Planned site expansion prioritises sparsely populated western and north-eastern districts to balance uneven regional network density, while technical teams push forward upgrades toward 5G-Advanced standards to unlock higher transmission speeds and lower latency for emerging scenarios such as autonomous driving and low-altitude economy monitoring systems. 

Fresh investment flows into bespoke private 5G networking solutions tailored for factory production lines and large-scale industrial parks, rolling out additional customised network setups to satisfy evolving digital production requirements across traditional manufacturing clusters.