How many base stations are there in the world? How many 5G base stations are there?

According to the latest statistics from Omdia, there are approximately 7 million physical sites and 10 million logical sites in the world.

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Due to tower sharing, some physical sites are shared by base station equipment of multiple operators, so the number of logical sites is greater than the number of physical sites.

However, the above number of sites refers to macro sites, and Small cells or distributed antennas installed on street light poles, indoors, etc. are usually not included.

China

According to data from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as of the end of March, the total number of mobile phone base stations in my country reached 8.523 million, of which the total number of 4G base stations was 5.51 million.

In terms of 5G, according to the 2020 interim financial reports of the three major operators, by June 2020, China Mobile had opened 188,000 5G base stations, and China Telecom and China Unicom shared and built 210,000 5G base stations, of which China Unicom built 100,000 and China Telecom built 110,000.

South Korea

According to data from the Ministry of Science and ICT of South Korea, as of 2019, the number of 4G LTE base stations in South Korea was approximately 870,000 (878,681).

South Korea was the first country in the world to commercialize 5G in April 2019. As of July 2020, the number of 5G base stations in South Korea has exceeded 121,000, of which SKT has 37,207 5G base stations, KT has 41,026, and LG U+ has 43,532.

USA

According to data from CTIA (CTIA), as of 2018, the number of wireless base stations (Cell sites) in the United States was approximately 350,000 (349,344). Since then, there has been no public update of the data.

In terms of 5G, US operators have never disclosed the number of 5G base stations, or even the number of 5G users.

Until recently, the M-Science department of Jefferies, a Wall Street investment bank, calculated based on sales data from major mobile business retail stores in the United States that the number of 5G users of the four major mobile operators in the United States is about 4.082 million, including Verizon about 2.2 million, AT&T about 629,000, T-Mobile about 501,000, and Sprint about 483,000.

According to public data from authoritative departments, as of the end of June, there were 66 million 5G mobile phones connected to the network in my country, and the number of 5G users in South Korea was about 7.37 million. In comparison, the development of 5G users in the United States was slower.

Japan

According to public information, Japan's three major mobile operators, NTT Docomo, KDDI, and SoftBank, each own more than 200,000 base stations, totaling more than 700,000. In addition, as of June 2020, Japan's new operator Rakuten Mobile has opened 5,739 4G base stations.

In terms of 5G base stations, Japanese operators have not disclosed the latest number of base stations, but only disclosed the number of deployed 5G base stations in the early stages of 5G commercialization.

Data shows that as of May 2020, Japan's three major operators have opened a total of 1,874 5G base stations, including 989 for NTT Docomo, 629 for KDDI, and 256 for SoftBank.

Compared with China and South Korea, Japan's 5G deployment is slow. Seeing that it is unable to achieve the established 5G coverage goals, Japanese operators are considering upgrading to 5G based on existing 4G base stations and frequency bands through dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) technology to speed up the realization of 5G wide coverage.

Germany

According to data from the German Federal Network Agency, in 2019, the total number of wireless base stations in Germany was approximately 190,000, including 62,567 4G LTE base stations, 57,457 3G UMTS base stations, and 70,432 2G GSM base stations.

Deutsche Telekom is currently leading the way in Germany's 5G construction. It has expanded its 5G coverage by recultivating some 3G UMTS frequency bands and then using 4G/5G dynamic spectrum sharing. As of June, Deutsche Telekom has upgraded 12,000 5G antennas. However, due to frequency bandwidth limitations, the speed is relatively low.

In addition, I recently saw the 5G introduction of Kuwaiti operator STC. The operator said that it has deployed more than 1,750 5G base stations. It is worth mentioning that Kuwait is one of the countries with a high mobile penetration rate in the world. With a population of only 4 million, the total number of mobile subscribers is 7 million, and the mobile penetration rate reaches 168%.

Finally, based on public data, the number of 5G base stations of major operators in China and South Korea is listed below:

Operators in other countries and regions have not yet disclosed the number of 5G base stations.

Of course, all the above data are just rough comparisons. Base stations include macro base stations, small base stations, micro base stations, pico base stations, indoor distribution systems and other forms. They are also divided into different networking methods of C-RAN and D-RAN, as well as different standards, different frequency bands and multiple sectors. With the development of technology, different frequency bands can be aggregated and the same frequency band can be shared among different standards, making it difficult to accurately count and compare.