China Telecom and Unicom jointly launches 5G SA supplement project

News from the official websites of China Telecom and China Unicom showed that the two companies simultaneously started the 5GSA supplementary project for wireless network main equipment procurement from a single source, Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd., ZTE Corporation, Ericsson (China) Communications Co., Ltd., and Datang Mobile Communications Equipment The limited company is the proposed single-source procurement supplier.

2020 is the first year of large-scale 5G construction in China and the first year of large-scale commercial use of 5G. China Telecom and China Unicom are building 5G networks in a way of co-construction and sharing, which is not only the difficulty of network construction this year but also the highlight of network construction.

As of the end of October, China Unicom and China Telecom have achieved remarkable results since the implementation of the joint construction and sharing. The scale of 5G base stations has been built up to 380,000 stations, CAPEX has saved 40%, OPEX has been saved by 35%, the sharing rate has reached more than 95%, achieving national ownership Coverage of cities above prefecture level.

At the same time, co-construction and sharing also bring technical advantages, such as achieving a peak downlink rate of 3.2Gbps with a 200MHz bandwidth outdoors. In addition, joint construction and sharing have also saved a lot of investment. Preliminary statistics can save more than 60 billion yuan in construction investment for the two companies. In the real sense, the 5G network coverage capacity can be quickly formed with the least investment and in the shortest time.

Take China Telecom as an example. From October 2019, it announced the global commercial launch of the Shenzhen SA network, to lead the release of the “5G SA Deployment Guide” in June 2020, and then announced the establishment of the world’s largest 5G SA co-construction shared network in November this year. Up to now, China Telecom’s 5G base stations have covered more than 300 cities across the country, and 5G users have exceeded 70 million. As for China Unicom, it has not announced 5G user data.

In September last year, China Telecom Co., Ltd. and China United Network Communications Co., Ltd. signed the “5G Network Co-construction and Sharing Framework Cooperation Agreement.” According to the cooperation agreement, China Telecom and China Unicom will cooperate to build a 5G access network nationwide, share 5G frequency resources, and build 5G core networks separately.

The two parties delineate regions, divide construction, who builds, who invests, who maintains, and who bears network operating costs. The two parties will undertake construction in 15 cities. Taking the total scale of 4G base stations (including room divisions) of both parties as to the main reference, in Beijing, Tianjin, Zhengzhou, Qingdao, and Shijiazhuang, the proportion of China Telecom and China Unicom’s construction area is 4: 6.

In the 10 cities of Shanghai, Chongqing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Suzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, and Chengdu, the ratio of China Telecom and China Unicom’s construction area is 6:4.

In addition to the above areas, China Telecom independently undertook the construction of Guangdong 10 cities in the province, 5 cities in Zhejiang Province, and 17 provinces (Anhui, Fujian, Gansu, Guangxi, Guizhou, Hainan, Hubei, Hunan, Jiangsu, Jiangxi, Ningxia, Qinghai, Shaanxi, Sichuan, Tibet, Xinjiang, Yunnan ), China Unicom independently undertook the construction of 9 cities in Guangdong Province, 5 cities in Zhejiang Province and 8 provinces.