Beijing pins focus on digital future

Beijing has deployed nearly 16,000 5G-Advanced (5G-A) base stations and leads Chinese cities in 5G base station density per 10,000 people, municipal authorities said recently.

Beijing will further expand opening-up in the telecom sector, said Lu Jianwen, director of the Beijing Communications Administration.

Six foreign-funded companies, including Cummins' China branch, have secured approval for the second batch of pilot operations in value-added telecom services such as internet service providers. To date, 10 foreign firms in Beijing have obtained such permits.

"Beijing is among the first four pilot cities in China to open value-added telecom services to foreign investment, leading the nation in both the number of approved foreign enterprises and the variety of permitted services," Lu noted.

He pledged to accelerate upgrades in networks such as 5G, gigabit optical networks and computing power infrastructure to bolster new quality productive forces.

Lu's remarks were made at Beijing's 2025 World Telecommunication and Information Society Day event. At the event, telecom operators vowed to advance new digital infrastructure and high-quality digital economic growth to empower the real economy's digital transformation.

For instance, China Mobile's Beijing branch is upgrading computing-network infrastructure. China Unicom's Beijing branch is advancing 5G/5G-A networks and 10-gigabit optical network pilot communities. China Telecom's Beijing branch is accelerating the implementation of digital innovation technologies. China Tower's Beijing branch has built extensive 5G base stations to drive efficient network establishment.

Li Qiang, general manager of China Mobile's Beijing branch, said that intelligence-driven digital innovation is critical to Beijing's socio-economic development.

The company will enhance computing power network infrastructure, data ecosystems and AI applications to fuel growth of the city's new quality productive forces.

Liu Junwei, China Mobile's chief expert, highlighted AI, data, and computing power as core drivers of new quality productive forces but noted challenges like high computing costs, reliance on foreign tech and incomplete commercial models.

Chen Haibo, general manager of China Unicom's Beijing unit, pledged stronger computing and data infrastructure, along with expanded computing power's innovation and supply. He said the company will ramp up technological innovation and investment of resources in cloud computing.

Kou Fengda, general manager of China Telecom's Beijing branch, emphasized large-scale management system of intelligence-driven computing resources and cloud-network-computing power integration to support Beijing's digital economy.

Wang Yu, a professor of Tsinghua University, called for optimizing large AI model training through hardware-software synergy.

"Current hardware upgrades offer limited gains, but software optimization holds vast potential to improve cost-performance ratios," Wang said. He emphasized that the application of large AI models must address cost-performance challenges.