PRESS RELEASE: One of the most impressive things from this year’s Asian Games in Hangzhou has been the number of medals that Team China has won. Just as impressive as that is the 5G network connectivity that the players and fans could experience. The 80,000 spectators attending the opening ceremony enjoyed ultra-fast 5G signal in the stadium.
Recently, a series of field tests were carried out in Hangzhou to look into the speed of 5G in different places across the city, including venues for the Asian Games, high-speed railway stations, the West Lake area, and residential areas. The results confirm that there is ubiquitous gigabit coverage across Hangzhou and give us an insight into the cutting-edge technologies behind the Hangzhou Asian Games.
Gigabit High-Speed Trains: Uninterrupted Videos and Gaming
Staying connected to a fast and stable network can be a challenge on high-speed trains. When trains pass through tunnels, 5G can slow down to 2G-speeds.
However, this is not the case on Hangzhou’s high-speed railway. A test on a train from Ningbo to Hangzhou found that the network connection remained fast and stable even when the train was traveling at 300 kilometers per hour. Passengers were able to browse Douyin, watch videos, and load and play games without any buffering.
How does Hangzhou’s high-speed railway maintain high network speeds when so many people want to use the network at the same time? The secret is 8T+2T cell combination technology for 5G base stations along high-speed railways. This technology is already being used by China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei to reduce the number of handovers between cells on different base stations by 90%, ensuring an average download rate of over 300 Mbps in the tunnel sections of Hangzhou’s high-speed railway.
Impressive connectivity is also available at stations. At Hangzhou East Railway Station, 5G positioning technologies support cross-floor navigation and can even provide nearby recommendations and information through an app. Hangzhou is the first city in China to pilot 5G positioning, which supports a precision of up to 2 to 3 meters and an accuracy of up to 90%. Many people are benefiting from such a remarkable indoor network experience at high-speed railway stations.
Gigabit Venues: Cutting-edge Visuals
High-speed railway stations do not have nearly as much foot traffic as sports stadiums like the Hangzhou Olympic Sports Center Stadium, which is also known as the “Big Lotus”. It was the main venue for the Hangzhou Asian Games this year, and as such, it was packed with 80,000 spectators during the opening ceremony. This made it the perfect place to check whether the fast network that was found at stations was also available in areas with heavier foot traffic. This proved no challenge for the Big Lotus, as all 80,000 spectators could use the 5G network to instantly share photos and videos with their families and friends.
The stadium is equipped with groundbreaking technologies such as glasses-free 3D, which offers spectators an immersive way to watch sports and allows them to virtually compete with their favorite athletes and engage in real-time interactions with the three digital mascots of the Hangzhou Asian Games: Congcong, Lianlian, and Chenchen, known collectively as the Jiangnanyi. In addition, AR navigation helps spectators find their seats quickly and accurately.
Providing stable and reliable communications at stadiums has been a significant challenge for network service providers due to the high user density, the high demand for different services at one time, and the dynamic nature of these conditions. The Asian Games were a chance for them to prove the quality of their networks. China Mobile Zhejiang and Huawei built the country’s first 2.6 GHz + 4.9 GHz ultra-dense 5G network and deployed micro sites to fill coverage holes and improve hotspot capacity. As a result, the 5G capacity is increased by 24%, and the 5G downlink rate is even increased by four times.
Intelligent O&M is also crucial for immersive spectating. China Mobile Zhejiang accurately predicted the impact of the Games on their network and formulated three contingency plans for when spectators were entering and exiting the stadium and for when everyone was seated.
During the Games, 360° grid-based management was in place across the stadium, including minute-level monitoring to ensure a timely response in the event of an emergency. Regular automatic mobile-phone-guided searches for malfunctioning equipment improved troubleshooting efficiency by 50%.
Gigabit Attractions: Glasses-free 3D Live Streaming
The West Lake is an iconic sight in Hangzhou. It received nearly 3.7 million visits during the Asian Games. Its beautiful scenery and long history also attract social media influencers to live stream and interact with audiences there.
Visitors have been raving about the network speed there. One visitor from Zambia said, “The network, 5G, in China is very good. Because whenever you are trying to send something from (to) Africa, it’s very easy to go there to reach that side.”
Five “Second Scenes” were set up for the Hangzhou Asian Games and proved popular with both tourists and athletes. These were essentially places for people to engage with the Games outside the official venues. For example, in the Wensan Digital Block, two giant interactive glasses-free 3D screens attract passers-by with their stunning visual effect. Underneath the screens, there is a 5G digital experience hall (one of the “Second Scenes”), where visitors can use VR technology to watch the Games, take photos with digital avatars of the medalists, and even play virtual basketball using PICO’s hand gesture recognition technology. Another of the “Second Scenes” is the 5G Technology Live Sports Experience Space, which is located on the City Balcony looking out at the Big Lotus from the other side of the Qiantang River. Here, visitors can watch diving competitions on glasses-free 3D tablets. Many reported feeling as though they were actually in the venue watching the competition live. Visitors can also use the exclusive video ring-back tones released by China Mobile Zhejiang to relive the highlights of the Asian Games.
Gigabit Communities: Deep Coverage Everywhere
In addition to tourists and spectators, the ubiquitous gigabit coverage in Hangzhou also benefits local residents. For example, a test at a local hotel proves that guests are able to edit their videos with ease. Thanks to city-wide ubiquitous coverage of the gigabit network, many leading companies in Hangzhou such as Ctrip and Alibaba have transitioned to a flexible work model that gives employees more freedom.
Premium 5G has also benefited grassroots workers such as deliverymen, security guards, and parking lot workers. They have expressed great satisfaction with the city’s 5G network, saying that 5G has been a “lifesaver” because it keeps them connected when the Wi-Fi gets stuck.
China Mobile Zhejiang has been the linchpin of such high-density coverage. The operator upgraded the network at hotels with poor Wi-Fi connections from 1T to 2T through IPMS reconstruction and this significantly improved both network capacity and user experience. It used Easy Macro 3.1 4+8 pole sites to quickly deploy 4G and 5G networks in residential areas with dense buildings and 5G coverage holes. This brought network coverage to an extra 7 to 10 floors in high-rise buildings, thus improving user experience by 50%, and also improved the uplink and downlink experience at streets by 50%. For low-rise residential buildings, China Mobile Zhejiang deployed Huawei’s Distributed Residential Solution (DRS). It was installed quickly and improved coverage and user experience.
Gigabit Offshore Areas: 5G for Underserved Areas
Densely-populated urban areas have long been the focus when improving network coverage, and this has meant that offshore areas continue to be underserved. The network signal in offshore areas was poor and unreliable in bad weather, and this caused inconveniences to fishermen. Zhejiang is a province with a long coastline, so this was an urgent problem that they have worked tirelessly to address. Back in 2021, China Mobile Zhejiang brought mobile gigabit optical broadband to households on the Dachen Islands, Jiaojiang District, so that the people there could enjoy super-fast network speeds when browsing social media or watching videos. In June of this year, the operator also brought dual-gigabit to Zhoushan, a city made up of many islands. Now, the residents can choose from more than 100 TV channels and also have access to some smart elderly care services.
China Mobile Zhejiang has been expanding its 5G network for wider and deeper coverage. It has built a powerful and versatile 2.6 GHz + 4.9 GHz dual-gigabit network that covers urban, rural, and offshore areas, in order to make premium 5G widely available everywhere in Zhejiang.