On April 28 2019, the People’s Government of Zhejiang Province, China Telecom, China Mobile, China Unicom, and China Tower Corporation (CTC) held a joint news conference launching their “5G+ Action” programme in Hangzhou. CTC Chairman Tong Jilu delivered a speech entitled “Promoting greater sharing and supporting 5G+”. CTC (Zhejiang) has introduced 5G+ industrial sharing, 5G+ energy innovation, the 5G+ smart lamp pole, 5G+ smart applications, 5G+ edge computing and other 5G+ innovative applications. This example from CTC (Zhejiang) illustrates how the concepts of “telecom towers” and “social towers” converge, showcasing the value of CTC as an enabler of the sharing economy.
5G+ industrial sharing
As the “enabler of the sharing economy”, China Tower Corporation cooperates with its partners and customers in several key fields by bringing into play telecom and social towers, social pipelines and social electricity resources including:
- CTC’s own 1.95mn sites and supporting facilities
- More than 10mn ‘social sites’ such as electricity utility poles, radio and TV towers
- ‘Social pipelines’ including the fiber, cable and electrical ducts of electricity utilities, radio and TV and expressway companies
- ’Social electricity’ resources including hydro, wind and solar generation resources to supplement the State Grid
By bringing together the functions of social poles and towers, and adding social pipelines and social electricity, the convergence of the “telecom towers” and “social towers” will reduce costs, improve efficiency, and maximize the saving of resources for China’s 5G construction.
5G+ energy innovation
Addressing the challenge of the anticipated 2-3x increase in power consumption of 5G base stations, CTC has leveraged innovative energy developments. CTC has established an innovation lab in Zhejiang to tackle 5G energy problems, and to drive the smart, efficient and modular development of 5G energy. By smartly reducing reliance on peak rate grid power, smartly controlling temperature, and smartly switching between energy sources, CTC’s external electric supply capacity requirement is reduced.
Meanwhile, China Tower Corporation (Zhejiang) has independently innovated a ‘rocket tube’ and 5G dedicated indoor cabinet.
5G+ smart lamp pole
The “multiple-poles-in-one” smart lamp pole is a product of CTC’s exploration of the co-construction and sharing of wireless base stations within urban public infrastructure.
Previously, the problems of decentralised management and single functions led to the proliferation of poles and towers in the urban environment, including street lamp poles, electric power poles, monitoring poles, traffic indication boards and advertising billboards. To address this situation, CTC and relevant departments of at Provincial level carried out a pilot project of “multiple-poles-in-one”. The telecom base station, street lamp, environmental monitoring, video surveillance, LED advertising, EV charging point, Wi-Fi and other functions are all integrated into one pole. At present, these smart lamp poles are being promoted in Jiaxing, Hangzhou, Huzhou and other regions of Zhejiang Province.
5G+ smart application
China Tower Corporation has a core resource of 1.95mn sites, providing extensive “vertical real estate” in various locations. These elevated locations are ideal to host private telecom networks, video surveillance, IoT-enabled sensors and “tower brightening” advertising. With continuous electric power guaranteed, professional maintenance and monitoring, CTC’s sites are a natural supporting platform for numerous 5G+ smart applications.
CTC cooperates with various industries to share resources, for example providing assistance to smart construction. Through “smart forestry”, “smart environmental protection”, “smart river way” and “emergency response command”, urban emergency response management systems are enhanced, and a data collection system has been jointly developed to provide real-time data support for urban supervision to safeguard citizens and property.
With premium location towers serving as outdoor advertising hosts, “tower brightening” provides an invaluable means of brand promotion to various industries, while decluttering the landscape to enhance Zhejiang’s beautiful environment.
Cross-industrial applications are deployed all over the Province, including a riverway monitoring project in Zhoushan, a straw incineration monitoring project in Jinhua, and tower brightening projects in Jiaxing, Shaoxing and Lishui.
5G+ edge computing
As increasingly large amounts of data need to be distributed from and cached closer to the network edge, CTC is able to leverage a surplus of existing computer room space and power distribution redundancy, enabling CTC to promote a bold transition from “telecom computer rooms” to “social computer rooms”, thus maximising benefits derived from computer room resources. The traditional computer room can be regarded as an edge computing node, enabling pressure to be reduced on cloud storage and computing capacity. Through these edge computing nodes, assistance can be provided to accelerate the emergence of autonomous driving, augmented reality, virtual reality, the internet of things, smart cities and remote monitoring.
CTC (Zhejiang) has also undertaken a large venue construction project for the Hangzhou Asian Games.
CTC is confident in its ability to support China’s rapid construction of a 5G network, characterized by the largest scale and the best quality in the world. This will drive improved digital lifestyles, IoT and intelligentization of everything, achieving enhanced information communication, simply making life better
Over the last four plus years, China Tower Corporation has invested RMB160bn (US$23bn) in total, and completed about 2.2mn tower base site station projects. The sharing rate of newly-built towers has increased from 14% to 75%. Tremendous industry investments have been unlocked, land and other social resources have been saved, urban environments have been de-cluttered and beautified, and the construction goals of “resource-saving, environmentally-friendly society” have been facilitated.
Chairman Tong Jilu stressed that China Tower Corporation is capable of undertaking the overall planning of 5G construction, and that CTC is confident in its ability to support China’s rapid construction of a 5G network, characterized by the largest scale and the best quality in the world. This will drive improved digital lifestyles, IoT and intelligentization of everything, achieving enhanced information communication, simply making life better.
Hangzhou is the first batch of 5G pilot cities, soon to expand nationwide. With a goal to build Hangzhou as “the First 5G City”, CTC (Zhejiang) positively seeks innovative solutions to 5G construction, operation, and maintenance.
CTC (Zhejiang) has set up a joint innovation project team with Huawei and other industry partners. In this joint innovation project, CTC leads the direction of research. A key component is the innovative 5G power supply solution developed by Huawei, which has a “one frequency, one blade, one station, one cabinet” construction principle. This leverages smart peak cutting, smart boosting, smart energy storage and other technical innovations to help customers save resources in electric supply, power distribution and cabinet optimization for 5G deployment. Meanwhile, they have achieved better performance in stock power supply for site pooling, cell mixing and other features. Huawei has also invested in refined site construction to enable efficient deployment.
CTC Chairman Tong Jilu said that the 5G energy joint innovation project initiated by CTC (Zhejiang) and Huawei will eventually be extended across the country. It has developed an excellent model for 5G site power supply which effectively reduces consumption of external power supplies, saving investment, reducing engineering reconstruction and powerfully supporting the rapid deployment of 5G sites. Together, CTC and its partners will further enhance technology evolution, and create great value for their customers.
