By Joseph Waring

China Mobile targets 1M 5G sites at end-2022

China Mobile committed to taking its 5G base station count to 1 million by end-2022, with the head of the world's largest mobile operator stating the Winter Olympics in Beijing showed the potential of the next-generation infrastructure in building a better future and providing inspiration for industry development.

In yesterday’s opening keynote, China Mobile Chairman Yang Jie forecast the number of 5G subscribers with compatible handsets would exceed 330 million by the end of the year.

China's three major operators ended 2021 with about 1.4 million 5G base stations, more than doubling year-on-year.

The massive amount of information interaction has increased demand for computing power and integrated networks, which he said requires networks to sense, schedule and orchestrate computing power. "We will keep pushing the construction of 5G and gigabit fibre networks."

With connectivity accelerating, Yang believes machine vision, hearing and haptics will become the main modes for information interaction.

Also speaking, China Unicom Chairman and CEO Liu LieHong highlighted the role of 5G during the recent Winter Olympics, calling the event the first “true 5G-powered games”. The operator's shared 5G network with China Telecom provided coverage to all 87 Olympic venues as well as at the roads connecting them.