LIVE FROM HUAWEI GLOBAL ANALYST SUMMIT: China’s massive 5G rollout accounted for 60 per cent of the global base station count at end-February with next-generation customers representing 56 per cent of the worldwide total, the head of a locally-based mobile research organisation claimed.

Wu Hequan, chairman of FuTure Mobile Communication Forum, said China’s 5G base stations stood at more than 2.3 million at end-February, comprising 21.9 per cent of the country’s total.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology recently predicted the number of 5G base stations in the country will hit 2.9 million at end-2023.

Citing data from an Ookla global city ranking, Wu stated Shanghai delivered the fastest mobile broadband speeds at 158.6Mb/s in October 2022.

Within China, he said 5G customers accounted for 34.9 per cent of total mobile users.

Wang Zhiqin, VP at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, forecast in his presentation consumer 5G penetration in China will reach 56 per cent by 2025.

Wang expects the deployment of private 5G networks, which is currently dominated by large corporates, to start to shift to SMEs.