Jiangsu to have 55,000 5G base stations

East China's Jiangsu province will establish 55,000 5G base stations by the end of 2020 and has launched many major 5G pilot programs, according to provincial officials.

Yuan Ruiqing, director of Jiangsu Provincial Communications Administration, said the province had more than 5,400 5G base stations by August and the number will rise to 10,800 by the end of this year. The official said that each of the province's 13 cities have developed specific plans to manufacture 5G equipment.

By June, the average communication fees in the province had dropped by 34.3 percent compared with the previous year. Internet speeds have increased by 13.4 percent, he said.

By 2020, Jiangsu will have 1,000 intelligent workshops for making automatic, intelligent networking equipment, with nearly 70 percent of the total equipment being manufactured by robots, according to the Industrial and Information Technology Department of Jiangsu.

The province will also promote the development of industries with new technologies like the internet of things, artificial intelligence and high-performance integrated circuits.

In September, the 2019 World Internet of Things Expo was held in the province in Wuxi, which attracted more than 195,700 visitors from across the world. About one-third of the 542 companies from 30 countries and regions attending the expo reached cooperation agreements.

Wuxi, home to more than 180,000 IoT professionals, has set up nine industry funds totaling 20 billion yuan ($2.8 billion) and is also home to the Wuxi Innovation Park of Sensing Network, China's first national-level IoT innovation park.

Based on Wuxi's rapid growth of IoT and manufacturing industry, the city established Xuelang town, which covers an area of 3.5 square kilometers, to promote the development of industrial internet together with tech giant Alibaba Group in 2017.

"Everyone talks about the transformation of traditional enterprises but I think it is the internet that needs an urgent transformation," said Wang Jian, founder of Alibaba Cloud and an adviser to the town. "The manufacturing industry has no future without the internet, while the internet without the manufacturing industry also has no future either."

Xuelang town aims to bring manufacturing and internet closer, he said. "I believe that more than 80 percent of the internet's computing resources and traffic will come from manufacturing in the next decade."

More than 10 major Chinese companies have moved or established branches in the town. An industrial internet expo held in the town during May attracted more than 800 leading manufacturing enterprises across the country.