"5G+Industrial Internet" from connection enabling to intelligent native
China Industry News Gao Juan
On the intelligent assembly line of COMAC's C919 large passenger aircraft, a manufacturing revolution driven by 5G technology is quietly advancing: flexible robots achieve precise scheduling through 5G private networks, increasing equipment utilization to 90%; The digital measurement system that integrates 5G transmission has reduced detection time by 80%.
In a smart warehousing base in Suzhou, a high-precision positioning system based on 5G millimeter waves is autonomously dispatching dozens of shuttle machines to complete cargo handling with an error accuracy of less than 50 centimeters.
On a broader scale, 1260 5G factories across China are demonstrating significant benefits: an average capacity increase of 25% and a 19% reduction in operating costs.
Behind this series of scenes is the solid step of China's "5G+Industrial Internet" from pilot exploration to large-scale implementation.
Policy piloting "5G+Industrial Internet" achievements are emerging
Under the powerful guidance of policies, the "5G+Industrial Internet" has achieved remarkable results, moving from concept to practice, from pilot to large-scale replication.
Driven by the "scenario driven" strategy, China's "5G+Industrial Internet" construction has entered a new stage of large-scale implementation.
At the 2025 China "5G+Industrial Internet" Conference held recently, Li Lecheng, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group and Minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (hereinafter referred to as the "Ministry of Industry and Information Technology"), said that China will carry out a series of actions to promote relevant development: implement the action of integrating industrial Internet and artificial intelligence, expand "platform+agent" services, and optimize the industrial Internet architecture; Implement the action of "chain network coordination" between industrial Internet and key industrial chains, formulate integrated application guidelines by industry, create an upgraded version of "5G+industrial Internet", accelerate the construction of 5G factories, and strengthen the forward-looking research on the integration of 6G and industry.
Under the powerful guidance of policies, the "5G+Industrial Internet" has achieved remarkable results, moving from concept to practice, from pilot to large-scale replication.
According to the data of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, up to now, there have been more than 20000 "5G+Industrial Internet" construction projects in China, officially stepping into a new stage of large-scale application. At present, there are more than 300 influential industrial Internet platforms in China, and more than 100 million industrial equipment are connected to key platforms; An independent and controllable industrial Internet identity analysis system has been established; The average production capacity of the 100 globally leading 5G factories cultivated has increased by 25%, product quality has improved by 21%, and operating costs have been reduced by 19%.
During the "14th Five Year Plan" period, China accelerated the implementation of the "5G+Industrial Internet" application, achieved full coverage of 41 industrial categories, and fully completed the "10 million" action goal of 5G factories. In terms of specific achievements, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology's "Hundred, Thousand, and Ten Thousand Action" targets for factories have been exceeded, and industry penetration and value empowerment have been deepened and enhanced. From 2023 to 2025, a total of 1260 graded and distinctive projects will be selected for the 5G factory directory, driving a total investment of 59.13 billion yuan. Compared to the previous two years, the 5G factory directory project in the manufacturing industry has improved product quality by 5.5%, reduced operating costs by 1.8%, and increased production capacity by 1.6%. The distribution of 5G factories in the national economy has expanded from 25 in 2023 to 48, with industries such as electronics, equipment manufacturing, chemical, steel, and power continuing to lead the way.
Many insiders also spoke highly of China's "5G+Industrial Internet" development. Liu Kang, Vice President of Huawei and President of ICTMarketing and Solution Sales, pointed out that China's "5G+Industrial Internet" has achieved remarkable development results, promoted large-scale application, accelerated popularization of 5G terminals, and led the world in standard construction. Ao Li, chief engineer of China Information and Communication Research Institute, also stressed that the "5G+industrial Internet" needs to be upgraded and developed in the next few years, moving towards a new stage of higher quality and large-scale development.
China's standard breaking from 'pioneer' to 'leader'
The internationalization of 5G standards provides a unified language for Chinese enterprises to "go global".
Based on the formation of industrial consensus and the expansion of application scenarios, China's experience of "5G+Industrial Internet" has been sublimated to the level of international standards. Recently, the world's first industrial 5G international standard, "General Requirements for 5G Communication Technology in Industrial Networks," led by China, was officially released, marking China's leap from a "pioneer" in technology application to a "leader" in rule making.
Fan Ji'an, chief scientist of big data of China Unicom, explained to China Industry Daily: "This standard is not led by operators or communication equipment manufacturers, but led by industrial automation research institutions and industrial enterprises. This means that this" 5G+Industrial Internet "initiative initially initiated by the government and operators has finally been truly recognized by the industry users it serves. ”He specifically mentioned that the Institute of Integrated Technology and Economics of Mechanical Industry Instrumentation (IITE), as the leading technical unit in China, has played a core supporting role in the development of standards.
More importantly, this standard was born within the framework of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) and was jointly completed by experts from multiple countries including China, Germany, the United States, France, and Japan. The role of 5G in industrial application scenarios has gained international consensus. ”Fan Jinan emphasized. The standard not only adopts a large number of China's "5G+industrial Internet" best practices - such as independent private networks, hybrid private networks, virtual private networks and other deployment modes, but also defines the key performance indicators of industrial 5G for the first time: end-to-end delay does not exceed 1 millisecond, transmission reliability reaches 99.9999%, and clearly supports the SIL2/SIL3 functional security level. The equipment must meet the industrial temperature range of -40 ° C to+85 ° C and IP67 protection level.
These stringent requirements directly point to the core demands of high reliability, low latency, and strong security in industrial sites. Yang Guang, a strategic analyst of Omdia Telecom, pointed out to China Industry Daily: "The main challenge facing the industrial Internet is the difficulty of system integration, and it is necessary to organically integrate 5G and other connection technologies with industry specific solutions and digital service platforms. Standardized interfaces can reduce integration difficulty, improve efficiency, and ensure a basic user experience
More importantly, the internationalization of standards provides a unified language for Chinese enterprises to "go global".
Yang Guang said: "Under the current international political environment, standardization is really a good starting point for promoting international cooperation, which can be continuously adhered to, and standards must be constantly updated to meet the needs of new technologies and new scenarios. However, in the market and practical application fields, due to the fact that industrial Internet often involves data security issues, it is really not easy to reach more in-depth cooperation, but it is still necessary to focus on us and strive to expand China's technical solutions and capabilities to the global market through the way of China's industrial chain group going to sea."
Scene deep cultivation of 5G empowers manufacturing with dual improvement of "quality and efficiency"
The trend of large-scale application of "5G+" has emerged in fields such as aviation, ports, mining, power, and electronic manufacturing.
Driven by both policies and standards, the "5G+Industrial Internet" is moving from a single breakthrough to industrial depth. Among them, the cooperation between China Unicom and COMAC can be regarded as a model.
Fan Ji'an pointed out that since 2018, the two sides have gone through three stages of evolution: from the world's first "park level 5G private network" to create a "5G fully connected factory", to COMAC becoming the first enterprise in China to obtain the 5.9GHz and 24GHz dedicated frequency band licenses from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology in 2022, and then to building a domestic large aircraft intelligent operation and maintenance system based on China Unicom's "Yuanjing Big Model" in 2024- this path clearly outlines how "5G+" will upgrade from a connection base to an intelligent engine.
The latest stage of the domestic aircraft large model project is facing the operational challenges brought by the large-scale operation of domestic civil aircraft, "said Fan Jinan. Faced with pain points such as difficulty in using the multi-dimensional and multi-level intermodal maintenance knowledge system, low reuse rate of fault cases, and shortage of professional talents, China Unicom and COMAC have jointly built an independent and controllable intelligent operation and maintenance large model system.
It is reported that the system is based on the China Unicom Yuanjing MaaS platform+Deepseek-R1671B model+COMAC private domain knowledge base, processing 300000 pages of maintenance manuals, achieving a Q&A accuracy rate of over 85% and a source recall rate of over 95%. The demand response time has been shortened from 3-7 days to within 1 day, and the diagnostic solution output has been compressed from 1-2 weeks to within 3 days.
In addition to aviation, large-scale applications of "5G+" have also emerged in fields such as ports, mines, power, and electronic manufacturing. For example, high-precision positioning technology based on 5G millimeter waves has been used to drive shuttle machines in multiple 3D warehouses in Suzhou; Machine vision quality inspection is not only used for product quality testing, but also for real-time monitoring of personnel operating SOP compliance, becoming one of the most widely used scenarios for industrial 5G.
Yang Guang pointed out: "The most suitable scenario for the development of 5G+industrial Internet is the scenario that requires both mobility and high requirements for communication service quality, such as AGV in flexible manufacturing, port gantry crane, mine conveyor belt, etc. Traditional Wi Fi is unable to meet its bandwidth, latency, and reliability requirements, making 5G an essential enabling technology
It is worth noting that with the rise of AI big models, traditional machine vision is being replaced by more generalized "visual intelligence big models". Fan Jinan revealed that in the pilot project of Lixun Precision, the cost of the SOP inspection robot solution based on a large model has been reduced by 50%, while the monitoring area can cover the entire production line. Next, we hope to promote the pre integration of the 'sensory computing intelligent control' all-in-one machine to small and medium-sized enterprises and industrial clusters, "said Fan Jinan.
Cross the gap and collaborate with multiple parties to solve the problem of large-scale implementation
Emerging fields such as embodied intelligence, robot training, and industrial simulation will become the new focus of collaborative research and development among industry, academia, and research.
Despite remarkable achievements, the large-scale implementation of "5G+Industrial Internet" still faces practical bottlenecks. As Yang Guang said, large initial investment, complex deployment, and unclear investment returns often constrain the determination of enterprises to introduce. The way to break the deadlock lies in the collaborative efforts of the government, industry alliances, and enterprises.
Firstly, the government needs to continuously strengthen policy guidance and financial support. The government should not only do a good job in top-level design and platform construction, but also support the development of enterprises through precise policies and resource allocation, and "support and send a journey". During this process, local governments are actively exploring a combination of "policy package+service package" measures to stimulate regional industrial vitality. Taking Chengdu as an example, the local government has systematically guided leading enterprises to build industrial Internet platforms and promoted the concentration of industrial APPs to the platform by establishing the enterprise cultivation library of characteristic industrial Internet platforms. In terms of support mechanism, Chengdu provides a subsidy of 15% of the actual investment amount for projects recognized as municipal demonstration platforms, with a maximum amount of 5 million yuan, effectively reducing the cost of enterprise transformation and improving overall collaborative efficiency.
Secondly, industry alliances should accelerate the precipitation of replicable solutions. Fan Jian introduced that China Unicom has formed more than 8000 5G factory solutions covering 41 industry segments through the establishment of digital science companies, industrial Internet companies and industry corps, and the "grid Unilink" platform has been selected into the top ten of the national double cross platform. In the past four years, the average annual growth of industrial Internet business has been three digits, and the cumulative revenue has exceeded 40 billion yuan. Customers constantly propose new demands such as' flexible manufacturing 'and' new industrial control ', which forces us to upgrade from general 5G to' industrial 5G '. ”Fan Jinan added.
Finally, companies need to explore new business models. Yang Guang suggested, "We should accelerate the scale promotion of standard solutions and replicable scenarios, and explore business models that benefit from win-win situations." For example, by adopting a "platform+service" subscription system, we can reduce the one-time investment of small and medium-sized enterprises; Reduce integration complexity through joint delivery of "operator+automation vendor+cloud service provider".
Looking ahead to the future, with the acceleration of commercial use of 5G-A (5G Advanced) and the deepening of 6G research and development, new generation capabilities such as communication perception integration, endogenous intelligence, and integration of sensing, computing, and control will inject stronger momentum into industrial scenarios. Yang Guang predicted that "emerging fields such as embodied intelligence, robot training, and industrial simulation will become the new focus of industry university research cooperation." This means that the "5G+industrial Internet" is moving from "connectivity enabling" to "intelligent native", and its value boundary will continue to expand.
Information source: China Industry News
