China Mobile

4G LTE trials began in September 2011 and commercially launched in December 2013. China Mobile holds 130 MHz of LTE TDD spectrum across B39 (1900 MHz), B40 (2300 MHz), and B41 (2500 MHz). China Mobile conducted carrier aggregation trials in 2014 achieving 220 Mbps downlink. 220 Mbps 2C service began in late 2014 utilising 2 x 20 MHz TDD B41 (2500 MHz) spectrum. Three carrier 3C LTE TDD was successfully demonstrated using 3x 20 MHz B41 spectrum in 2015 achieving over 420 Mbps.

The company trialled LTE-Advanced Pro Massive MIMO technology in B41 TDD spectrum in Shanghai, achieving peak throughputs of 630 Mbps DL and 72 Mbps UL.

China Mobile received a licence to offer mobile services based on FDD-LTE technology in April 2018.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry & Information Technology (MIIT) announced in 2017 aggressive targets for NB-IoT rollouts for all three of the country's national operators. China Mobile's existing TDD LTE network could not support the FDD-based NB-IoT standard. The company has embarked on an extensive construction project involving 400,000 new NB-IoT base stations by end of 2017, and 1.5 million by 2020. A dual-band B3 (1800 MHz) and B8 (900 MHz) network was selected. In May 2017 Wuxi became China's first city to achieve full NB-IoT coverage.

China Mobile has conducted extensive 5G NR testing. In June 2017, China Mobile and ZTE established China’s first 5G pre-commercial testing base station in Guangzhou. In February 2018 China Mobile announced that it would conduct 5G field tests in Hangzhou, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Suzhou, and Wuhan, constructing more than 100 5G base stations in each city. The company would also offer 5G demonstrations in 12 cities: Beijing, Xiong’an, Tianjin, Fuzhou, Chongqing, Chengdu, Nanchang, Nanning, Shenzhen, Zhengzhou, Shenyang and Lanzhou.

The Chinese MIIT issued China Mobile a total of 260 MHz bandwidth for the purposes of 5G testing, from 2515 to 2675 MHz, and 4800 to 4900 MHz.

In partnership with ZTE, China Mobile announced successful field trials of n41 (2500 MHz) 5G, achieving data rates of 1.8 Gbps using a 100 MHz channel width in December 2018. A pilot base station was implemented in Beijing in December 2018, which provided data rates up to 2.8 Gbps over the n79 (4500 MHz) band, using Huawei's 64T64R AAU5913 and a channel bandwidth of 100 MHz. 

The company commercially activated its 5G network on the 1st of November 2019. The company has built more than 50,000 5G base stations in 50 key cities and has carried out 5G network construction in more than 300 cities across the country. In 2020, the operator further expanded its network coverage, with a view to providing 5G services to all cities above the prefecture level.