Over the 75 years since the founding of the People’s Republic of China, China Telecom Corporation Limited (China Telecom) has been committed to building a comprehensive intelligent network. It has striven to accelerate the construction of digital information infrastructure, ensure the smooth flow of information, and empower high-quality economic and social development, in order to contribute to the building of a digital China.
Enhancing digital infrastructure capacity
As the main force in building China into a cyberspace power and digitalized country, and maintaining cybersecurity, China Telecom has kept pace with the evolution of network technology, expanding coverage and improving service quality to provide users with high-quality communication services.
In 1999, China Telecom led the first major speed-up of the internet, upgrading from 56k dial-up to ADSL, thus ushering the nation into the broadband era. In early 2011, it initiated the “Broadband China: Optical Network City” program, investing heavily in fiber-to-the-home (FTTH) and providing users with 100 Mbps access.
In recent years, China Telecom has advanced the construction of dual-gigabit networks with optical broadband and 5G. The broadband access rate in administrative and poverty-alleviated villages has reached 100 percent, and China Telecom has been the first to achieve gigabit network upgrades, covering over 300 cities and providing reliable and robust communication support for national development.
In the mobile communication sector, China has experienced a rise from 1G to 5G. In 2014, the number of mobile internet users surpassed traditional PC internet users for the first time, thanks to the evolution of mobile networks driven by telecom service providers like China Telecom. Since launching commercial use of 4G and 5G in 2014 and 2019 respectively, China Telecom and China Unicom have collaborated to accelerate network deployment, with over 2 million shared 4G mid-frequency base stations and more than 1.21 million 5G base stations in operation, achieving continuous coverage in towns and effective coverage in well-off administrative villages.
Moreover, China Telecom has expanded into maritime and aerial communication, vigorously promoting the three emerging businesses of Tiantong Satellite, aviation internet, and ocean broadband, thereby continuously improving a comprehensive and high-performance network layout covering land, sea, air, and space.
China Telecom has built the world’s largest LTE-FDD network, the largest shared 5G SA network, the largest NB-IoT network, and the largest gigabit optical fiber network globally, becoming a leading global internet operator and the only domestic satellite mobile communication operator.
As the evolution continues from networks to clouds and then to AI, China Telecom is fully implementing the “Cloud and Digital Transformation” strategy, deeply integrating cloud and network, accelerating intelligent computing upgrades, and promoting intelligent network interconnectivity.
Building sustainable development
As of the first half of 2024, China Telecom had built over 36,000 5G industry application projects and served more than 12,000 industry private network clients, including over 4,000 in industrial internet and more than 3,000 in public service networks, significantly promoting the digital, intelligent, and green transformation of various industries and empowering the intelligent development of the real economy.
In the industrial sector, China Telecom has created 5G fully connected factories and innovative 5G + industrial internet scenarios, unleashing new momentum for manufacturing. The first five-star 5G factory in China — ZTE’s Nanjing Intelligent Binjiang 5G Factory — has successfully put over 110 innovative applications of 5G + industrial integration into practice, including 5G cloud-based AGV and visual quality inspection, significantly enhancing overall production efficiency.
In agriculture, China Telecom has developed “5G Smart Tea Gardens + Cloud-Based Smart Factories” in Yunnan’s Pu’er, Lincang, and Xishuangbanna, using 5G IoT wireless sensor networks to monitor tea growth environments in real time, improving the quality of tea cultivation and processing, and increasing local tea farmers’ incomes.
In smart transportation, China Telecom built a dedicated 5G network for Xiaomi Auto, seeing the first 5G private network with close access in 31 provinces, realizing optimal interconnectivity among “vehicles, networks, and clouds,” and creating a benchmark case for 5G connectivity in new energy vehicle companies.
In smart healthcare, China Telecom, supported by its 5G network, enabled the country’s first successful remote surgery for a rare bone disease. During this 5G remote surgery, experts in Beijing operated a robot over 3,000 kilometers away to perform joint replacement surgery on a patient in Xizang, achieving nearly 100 percent accuracy.
Accelerating the development of new quality productive forces
China Telecom places great emphasis on technological innovation, accelerating breakthroughs in key core technologies and promoting high-level technological self-reliance. It aims to achieve breakthroughs and obtain more original and disruptive technological innovations to further facilitate the “technology-product-industry” cycle and cultivate new momentum for productive forces.
As for 6G networks, China Telecom is focusing on key core technologies such as proximity-integrated cellular networks (P-RAN) and integrated terrestrial and space networks. It has completed research on multi-satellite multi-beam coordinated transmission and 6G star-ground frequency sharing technologies.
Additionally, China Telecom strengthens its efforts on key core technologies in the next generation of information communication, leading the industry's future direction in “next-generation optical networks.” It has successfully achieved experimental results of single-wave 400 Gbit/s transmission over a distance of 1,050 km, setting a world record for single-mode fiber real-time optical transmission capacity and distance.
In the future, China Telecom will accelerate network upgrades, optimize network architecture, strengthen quality network communications, and continuously advance the construction of digital information infrastructure centered on cloud-network integration. It will enhance cybersecurity capabilities and take the lead in advancing Chinese modernization, shouldering responsibilities and setting an example as it writes the telecommunications chapter in Chinese modernization.
(Executive editor: Zhu Zeya)
