Cheng Jianjun on China's Spectrum Strategy: High, Medium and Low Band Allocation to be Fully Considered in the Future

During the conference, Cheng Jianjun, Director of China National Radio Monitoring Center, shared the Chinese government's experience in the development of 5G spectrum strategy. MWC Barcelona 2022 kicked off recently. The ministerial conference "Spectrum Strategy for 4G, 5G and Future Evolution" organized by GSMA was also held on the opening day. During the conference, Mr. Cheng Jianjun, Director of China National Radio Monitoring Center, shared his experience on the development of 5G spectrum strategy by the Chinese government. In his keynote speech, Cheng said that spectrum is a very basic resource and a key factor in the development of mobile communications. He pointed out that the decision making of the regulator will play a very far-reaching role in the future development of the industry. New mobile technologies are driving the transformation of various industries, and how to allocate spectrum resources more effectively to achieve innovation and drive sustainable development has become a very important topic. "Starting from 2021, China has made great progress in building its 5G network. More than 1.42 million 5G base stations have been built in China, 5G network coverage has been achieved in urban areas and is being extended to rural areas, and the number of 5G users in China has reached 355 million. The scale of 5G industry applications in the Chinese market is showing a significant growth trend," he said. He said. The positive measures in China's 5G spectrum policy are prerequisites for the rapid development of 5G in China," said Cheng. The China National Radio Monitoring Center will play a pioneering and fundamental role in spectrum policy to support the rapid and large-scale deployment of 5G, based on the comprehensive consideration of the characteristics of high, medium and low frequency bands. So far, China has planned about 1200 MHz of spectrum in the low and medium bands for IMT systems, of which 770 MHz of spectrum has been licensed for 5G. He also introduced that there are three main aspects of China's current 5G spectrum strategy. First, China has chosen the mid-band as the primary frequency band for 5G technology because it offers high capacity and better network coverage, and can provide good cost-efficiency for large-scale use. "In 2017, we selected the 3.5 GHz and the heavily farmed 2.6 GHz bands for commercial 5G services in China. Every mobile operator in China has more than 100MHz of contiguous spectrum bandwidth. At the same time, the Chinese government is also actively promoting the use of lower frequency bands, including the gold band 700MHz and the refarmed 2.1GHz band, which also play a very important role in 5G deployment. In addition, the Chinese government wants to support the use of 5G in vertical industries, and to this end, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has released radio frequency usage guidelines for industrial Internet and Internet of Things, hoping to better promote the efficient use of 5G and other wireless technologies in industrial Internet, Internet of Things and digital transformation. To this end, China's regulators have been conducting extensive spectrum planning and clearing of relevant frequency bands since 2017 to ensure that interference between different services is reduced and eliminated. Looking ahead, a new GSMA report shows that global demand for 5G mid-band will continue to grow significantly from 2025 to 2030," said Cheng. In WRC-23 AI 1.2, the ITU is also considering adding new 6-7GHz IF bands for IMT. He pointed out, "With the popularity of fiber optics, the development of satellite communications is gradually expanding to higher frequency bands, and many countries have already auctioned or planned to use the C-band satellite fixed business downlink business frequencies for IMT business, creating the conditions for releasing some frequency resources in the 6-7GHz band of their uplink for 5G. The 6-7GHz band has both bandwidth and propagation characteristics, and can take advantage of the existing mid-band 5G global industry to reduce costs, making it particularly suitable for developing countries to deploy 5G or future 6G systems. Finally, Cheng concluded, "China is actively participating in the research on the mid-band, and we hope to contribute to the construction of 5G and the future ecosystem in China, as well as to the ITU framework and guidelines. As a regulator, we also hope to further promote the development of the industry and the standardization of standards, to promote the future development of the global digital economy. Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)