English English

By Xie Fang

Passengers at the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station may soon enjoy the amazing speed of the 5G network as the city plans to turn the station into the world's first 5G-covered railway station, The Paper reported Tuesday.

The project is to be jointly undertaken by two domestic telecom giants, namely, the Shanghai branch of China Mobile and Huawei, which held a launch event Tuesday afternoon.

During the event, Huawei showed the audience its 5G digital indoor system (DIS), the core technology of the whole project.

The 5G DIS will enable the peak transmission rate of the 5G network to reach 1.2 Gbps, meaning that it will take passengers less than 20 seconds to download a high-definition movie with a size of 2 GB.

The 5G DIS will also make services like high-definition remote visual communication and ultra-high-definition multipath video transmission available to passengers, which will greatly improve the passenger experience.

According to Zhou Yuefeng, chief marketing officer of Huawei's wireless division, the 5G DIS, developed by Huawei's Shanghai-based institute, is the only commercialized 5G indoor product in global 5G industry at present, which can now be shipped in batches.

Zhou disclosed that the institute has investment up to 2 billion U.S. dollars in the 5G development over the past decade.

Zhou said that compared with the analog signal which is currently covering the station, the 5G network can significantly reduce the time-delay, which enables a more precise control of passenger traffic.

In addition, more robots can also be put to work under a 5G environment, providing passengers with more AI-powered services like indoor navigation.

With an annual passenger traffic of over 60 million, the Shanghai Hongqiao Railway Station is one of the busiest railway stations in Asia.

"The application of the 5G technology is expected to bring a fresh experience to passengers," said Zhang Jianming, deputy director of the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization.