How Many 5G and LTE Base Stations are there in China

According to the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, in 2020, the three operators (China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom) and China Tower completed a total of 407.2 billion yuan of investment in fixed assets, an increase of 11 percent over the previous year. The fixed asset investment in mobile communications accounted for 52.9 percent, an increase of 5.1 percent.

The total number of mobile communication base stations in China reached 9.31 million, with a net increase of 900,000 for the year. Of these, 5.75 million 4G base stations have been built, and more than 600,000 5G base stations have been built. More than 718,000 5G base stations have been put into operation, including more than 330,000 5G base stations jointly built and shared by China Telecom and China Unicom.

The number of cellular IoT users of the three major operators reached 1.136 billion, with a net increase of 108 million in the whole year. The end users of smart manufacturing, smart transportation and smart public utilities accounted for 18.5 percent, 18.3 percent and 22.1 percent respectively.

The number of IPTV (Internet TV) users reached 315 million, with a net increase of 21.2 million during the year.

Average monthly mobile Internet traffic (DAU) reached 10.35GB/ household · month, an increase of 32% over the previous year; In December, the monthly DAU was as high as 11.92GB/ household · month. The total number of fixed-line broadband users of the three major operators reached 484 million, with a net increase of 34.27 million over the year. Among them, the total number of fixed Internet broadband users with access rates of 100Mbps or above reached 435 million, with a net increase of 50.74 million, accounting for 89.9 percent of the total fixed broadband users, or 4.5 percentage points higher than that at the end of the previous year.