2026-10-12
According to China Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT), China had 5.102 million 5G base stations by the end of June 2026, with 5G-Advanced (5G-A) commercial coverage in more than 330 cities; 168 communities, factories, and campuses in 86 cities are piloting 10-gigabit optical networks. GSMA reports that China accounts for over 40% of global 5G connections.
Unlike the early 5G build-out that solved basic coverage, this upgrade focuses on reliably uploading large volumes of data. AI agents, humanoid robots, and low-altitude drones need to stream massive HD video, point-cloud, and sensor data to the cloud in real time, making downlink-centric network designs insufficient and driving an uplink-centric rebuild.
China Mobile has deployed a 5G-A super-uplink solution, cutting AI inference cost by 30%; by end-May it had about 200,000 5G-A three-carrier-aggregation base stations and over 1.4 million RedCap base stations, serving more than 160 million 5G-A users. Shanghai Telecom built one of the first 5G-A plus AI super-uplink commercial networks, and Hangzhou Xixi Wetland deployed 46 5G-A base stations for a 10 sq km continuous-coverage demonstration zone with uplink peak rates around 1 Gbps.
For the cable industry, large-scale 5G-A deployment and denser in-building distribution systems will keep driving rigid demand for RF coaxial feeders, jumpers, and low-loss RF cables.