Chen Jinqiao: China's 4G network sets a world record and its network quality is the best in the world

On December 23, at the annual APP awards ceremony of the "2016 Mobile Life Summit" hosted by China National Radio and China National Radio Network, Chen Jinqiao, deputy chief engineer of the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, said that broadband as a strategic public facility in the information society has been generally recognized by the whole society, and China's fiber-optic broadband development level has ranked first in the world this year and is at the leading level. China's 4G and broadband have set world records, and the network quality is also the best in the world.

4G users account for 43% of the global market

Chen Jinqiao mentioned that the total number of base stations in China is equivalent to the number of base stations of all European operators in 10 years; the number of 4G users in my country will exceed 700 million, accounting for 55% of mobile phone users, surpassing 2G and 3G in all aspects, accounting for 43% of the total number of 4G users in the world, exceeding the sum of the United States and Europe, achieving catch-up; the penetration rate of mobile broadband (3G+4G) exceeds 70%, 17 percentage points higher than the global average.

At present, countries are constantly deepening their understanding of the importance of information and communication infrastructure, and the attributes of broadband as a public infrastructure have become clearer. Countries have actively introduced policies to support high-speed broadband, promoting the continuous evolution of network facilities to a new generation of information infrastructure. Gigabit broadband has become a new focus of competition among developed countries such as the United States, Europe, Japan and South Korea. Accelerating the development of 5G has become a strategic consensus among countries, and 2016 has become the first year of 5G standards.

Chen Jinqiao pointed out that the global information infrastructure has four major characteristics: "complete, high, wide and intelligent", namely, full coverage, high speed, wide popularity and intelligence.

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The scale of global 4G networks is growing steadily

According to GSMA statistics, as of July 2016, 521 LTE commercial networks have been deployed in 170 countries. This year, a total of 74 operators have launched new commercial LTE services. Jamaica, Liberia, Myanmar and other places have achieved LTE coverage for the first time. It is expected that there will be 560 LTE commercial networks by the end of this year.

More than 100 LTE-A networks are currently compatible with smartphones and other user devices with Cat 6 (151-300 Mbps downlink), networks with Cat 9 (301-450 Mbps) capabilities are also expanding significantly, Cat 11 systems (up to 600 Mbps) will be commercially available by the end of 2016, and 1 Gbps services are just around the corner.

The global promotion of VoLTE is accelerating. As of July 2016, 51 operators in 29 countries have put it into commercial use, and the number of terminals supporting VoLTE has reached 228.

It is understood that among the three major domestic operators, China Mobile has already put its services into commercial use in 141 cities in 13 provinces, while China Unicom and China Telecom plan to put them into commercial use in 2016 and 2017 respectively.

As of July 2016, China Mobile's 4G (TD-LTE) network investment totaled approximately RMB 50.35 billion, and the construction of approximately 1.375 million 4G (TD-LTE) base stations was completed, including 1.084 million macro base stations and 291,000 indoor distributed base stations.

As of July 2016, China Unicom has completed a total 4G investment of 9.45 billion yuan, built a total of 505,000 4G base stations (496,000 FDD and 8,900 TDD), 67,962 4G indoor distribution systems, and 1,521,900 4G carrier fans.

As of July 2016, China Telecom has invested 21.34 billion yuan in LTE networks, implemented LTE hybrid networking in 318 local networks across the country, and completed 485,000 4G outdoor base stations and 179,000 indoor distribution systems.