China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) recently reported the country’s 5G base station count topped a staggering 4 million at end-August, up by 600,000 since the beginning of the year.

The jump comes despite the country’s major mobile players starting to trim 5G capex, which had been elevated since they began to roll out 5G in late 2019.

The current count is a significant jump from 3 million at end-June 2023. The nation’s 5G deployment up until then averaged about 750,000 base stations a year,  a much slower pace than the 1 million added over the past 14 months.

China Mobile alone deployed an additional 351,000 5G base stations in H1, taking its total to 2.3 million. Its capex in the period dropped 21.3 per cent year-on-year to CNY64 billion ($9.1 billion), with CNY173 billion earmarked for the full year, down from CNY180 billion in 2023.

The full-year outlay at China Mobile and China Unicom is forecast to dip to around 16 per cent of total revenue this year from 20 per cent to 21 per cent in 2023, respectively, a report from HSBC estimated. China Telecom’s capex is also expected to decline to about 16 per cent from 17.5 per cent last year and 18.6 per cent in 2022.

What are we counting?
Remy Pascal, principal analyst, Mobile Infrastructure at Omdia told Mobile World Live MIIT counts and reports radio units not physical sites or base stations, which typically bundle one baseband unit with three radio units.

He noted China is not the only country or operator counting the number of equipment deployed compared to the number of cell sites, suggesting Bharti Airtel with about 947,000 broadband base stations is likely reporting the number of radio units. The India-based operator said it added nearly 95,000 base stations year-on-year, about one-third of China Mobile’s 5G deployment over six months.

Pascal said it is difficult to track the installed base and volume of equipment. Omdia tracks RAN investment on a quarterly and annual basis. For the first six months of 2024, it estimates China accounted for 33 per cent of the global RAN investment and India a bit more than 5 per cent.

He explained the actual configuration of a site makes a big difference. China’s initial 5G deployment stage was dominated by massive MIMO active antenna units. It is now a mix of some massive MIMO but also more traditional radio units, especially for lower bands such as 700MHz, and those have a lower cost per unit, which is one of the factors explaining a high number of units despite the capex slowdown.

Global footprint
Research companies following the industry reckon China accounts for about a third of the global total of macro sites (all technologies, but a bit higher for 5G). Rough estimates peg the worldwide count at 10 million, with 3 million in China and 1 million in India. Government figures showed India had 420,000 5G base stations (or radio units) at end-January, after aggressive buildouts by Reliance Jio and Airtel starting in October 2022.

Data from Japan’s Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications indicate the country’s four mobile operators had a total of more than 1.2 million base stations (radio units) at end-December, with nearly 170,000 5G sites/units. SoftBank Corp leads with about 65,000 5G base stations. 

Japan, with a land mass of 377,973 square km, is more than eight-times smaller than India (3.3 million square km) and 1/25th the size of China (9.6 million square km). Since Japan has 4 per cent of China’s area, it makes sense for its 5G base station count to be about 4 per cent of the mainland’s total.

India is about a third the size of China, which has 9.5-times more 5G base stations after a three-year head start. 

With Vodafone Idea coming to the 5G party this year, India’s numbers will get a big boost. But both Jio and Airtel have said capex will drop in the current fiscal year after peaking in fiscal 2024 (ending 31 March).

Jio’s parent does not disclose capex for its mobile unit; Airtel’s jumped 18.5 per cent INR333.8 billion ($4 billion) in fiscal 2024. JM Financial forecasts the two operators’ capital outlay in fiscal 2025 to drop by 31 per cent to INR302 billion and to an estimated INR275 billion, respectively.

Although Airtel is planning to go live with standalone (SA) technology for FWA this year, MD and CEO Gopal Vittal said in its last earning call the incremental capex to run SA is “very modest because our radio network, our core network, everything is ready for SA”.

Assuming India in the long term will need to deploy a third of the 5G equipment as China to match its smaller size, it has a lot of room for growth.

The question is how many more radio cells do China’s big three need for ubiquitous 5G coverage nearly five years after launch. No doubt the country’s two major equipment vendors, barred from exporting to most Western markets, will feel the pain when the last domestic 5G radio units are installed. But robust demand for private 5G networks from China’s vast enterprise segment will pick up some of the slack.