China maintained its position among the leaders in cutting edge technology in 2020. The country’s three major telecommunications companies, China Mobile, China Telecom and China Unicorn added a little under 1 million new 5G base stations last year.
| Carrier | 5G subs total (millions) | New 2020 5G subs (millions) | 5G base stations | New 5G base stations 2020 | 4G subscribers (millions) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| China Mobile | 165 | 162.5 | 390,000 | 339,000 | 775 |
| China Unicom | 70.83 | 65* | 380,000 | 320,000 | 270 |
| China Telecom | 86.5 | 75.77 | 380,000 | 300,000 | 264.5 |
| Totals | 322 | 303 | 1,150,000 | 959,000 | 1,310 |
The folks over at The Register calculated the numbers from the annual financial results from China’s big 3. On top of that, China’s mobile network operators increased 5G subscriptions to 303 million in 2020.
To put that number into perspective that’s 15 times the population of Zimbabwe. I am not even going to talk about that number in relation to the number of mobile internet users in the country because I am sure you get the picture.
As if that wasn’t enough China’s big three are going to be added hundreds of thousands of more 5G base stations in 2021. This is projected to net them millions of new subscribers this year.
2 comments
Even though I hate the business practices especially in Africa I’d like to congratulate them for such a mean feat in spite of the hullabaloo in connection with Huawei Technologies.
I heard some scary/interesting things about 5G (no, not the 5g gave me covivi stuff!). The most relevant one to china in particular and the rest of the world at large is how beamforming, a critical aspect of the tech, has the bonus effect of precise device location tracking and logging. Not crying over this spilt privacy milk, its just interesting stuff to think about. Kinda like the recently demonstrated capability of smart speakers to pick up and monitor nearby heart activity😐