Cheng Jianjun talks about China's spectrum strategy: In the future, the allocation of high, medium and low frequency bands will be fully considered

The 2022 MWC Barcelona Conference kicked off recently. The ministerial meeting organized by GSMA, "Spectrum Strategy for 4G, 5G and Future Evolution", was also held on the opening day. During the meeting, Cheng Jianjun, director of the China National Radio Monitoring Center, shared the Chinese government's experience in the development of 5G spectrum strategy.

Cheng Jianjun said in his keynote speech that spectrum is a very basic resource and a key factor in the development of mobile communications. He pointed out that the decision-making of regulators will play a very far-reaching role in the future development of the industry. New mobile communication technologies are driving the transformation of various industries. How to more effectively allocate spectrum resources to achieve innovation and promote sustainable development has become a very important topic.

"Since 2021, China's 5G network construction has made great progress. China has now built more than 1.42 million 5G base stations, 5G networks have achieved full coverage in urban areas, and are being promoted to rural areas. The number of 5G users in China has reached 355 million, and innovative industry use cases cover 20 fields, including manufacturing, medical care and health. The scale of 5G industry applications in the Chinese market is showing a substantial growth trend," he said.

Cheng Jianjun said that China's positive measures in 5G spectrum policy are a prerequisite for the rapid development of China's 5G. China's National Radio Monitoring Center will play a leading and fundamental role in spectrum policy based on comprehensive consideration of the characteristics of high, medium and low frequency bands to support the rapid large-scale deployment of 5G. So far, China has planned about 1200 MHz bandwidth spectrum in the medium and low frequency bands for IMT systems, of which 770MHz bandwidth spectrum resources have been licensed for 5G. He also introduced that China's current 5G spectrum strategy mainly has three aspects:

First, China chose the mid-band as the main frequency band for 5G technology because it can provide high capacity and good network coverage, and can provide good cost-effectiveness for large-scale use. "In 2017, we selected the 3.5GHz and re-cultivated 2.6GHz bands for 5G commercial services in China. Each mobile operator in China has more than 100MHz of continuous spectrum bandwidth."

At the same time, the Chinese government is also actively promoting the use of low-frequency bands, including the golden band 700MHz and the recultivated 2.1GHz band, which also play a very important role in 5G deployment.

In addition, the Chinese government hopes to support the use of 5G in vertical industries. To this end, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology has issued a guide to the use of radio frequencies for the Industrial Internet and the Internet of Things, hoping to better promote the efficient use of 5G and other wireless technologies in the Industrial Internet, the Internet of Things and digital transformation.

To this end, Chinese regulators have carried out a lot of spectrum planning and clearing work in related frequency bands since 2017 to ensure that interference between different services is mitigated and eliminated.

Cheng Jianjun said that looking to the future, a new report released by GSMA shows that the global demand for 5G mid-frequency bands will continue to grow significantly from 2025 to 2030. In WRC-23 AI 1.2, ITU is also considering adding new mid-frequency bands such as 6-7GHz for IMT.

He pointed out that "with the popularization of optical fiber, satellite communications have gradually expanded to higher frequency bands, and many countries have auctioned or planned the C-band satellite fixed service downlink business frequencies for IMT services, creating conditions for releasing part of the 6-7GHz uplink frequency resources for 5G. The 6-7GHz frequency band has the characteristics of both bandwidth and propagation, and can also give play to the advantages of the existing mid-band 5G global industry to reduce costs. It is particularly suitable for developing countries to deploy 5G or future 6G systems."

Finally, Cheng Jianjun concluded, "China is actively participating in relevant research on the mid-frequency band. We hope to contribute to the construction of 5G and the future ecosystem, and also hope to contribute to the ITU framework and guidelines. As a regulator, we also hope to further promote the development of the industry and the unification of standards, and promote the vigorous development of the global digital economy in the future."