In an open space in front of the Hefei Municipal Administration Service Center, a six-rotor drone is taking off. It carries ID cards, official documents, etc. and is ready to fly to the mail processing center of Hefei Railway Station, 15 kilometers away. This journey took more than an hour by car on the ground, but the drone only took 15 minutes, saving nearly 10 times the time.
Since this "air mail route" in urban airspace was officially put into normal operation in February 2025, an average of more than 200 express delivery items have been transported every day, and they can be delivered to customers as soon as the next day, creating a replicable urban low-altitude smart logistics demonstration model.
In front of the Hefei Municipal Service Center, staff are loading batteries for drones. Photo by Zuo Yuqing
Anhui Province is the third pilot province in the country and the only low-altitude airspace management reform in the Yangtze River Delta region. Currently, it has gathered more than 700 low-altitude upstream and downstream enterprises. Hefei City also regards the low-altitude economy as an important engine for the development of new productivity, accelerating the layout of the entire industrial chain ecology, and currently has opened more than 260 routes such as drone delivery.
At the end of 2024, in response to Anhui Province's low-altitude airspace management reform pilot and Hefei City's strategic deployment of building a "low-altitude city", and to implement the pilot requirements for "unmanned" application scenarios in the postal industry, China Telecom Hefei Branch and Hefei Post officially launched the construction of low-altitude logistics drone routes and jointly created "postal logistics low-altitude routes."
The stable operation of an air mail route first requires an invisible ground network. China Telecom has customized a 5G low-altitude private network for this route. Through beam forming and antenna adjustment, it can achieve full-area coverage of 5G signals in the air.
"Unlike ground communications, drones need to transmit high-definition video and flight data back in real time, and the main demand for the network is uplink bandwidth." The relevant person in charge of China Telecom told reporters that the private network ensures that the uplink rate is not less than 25 megabits, the transmission delay is less than 50 milliseconds, the signal is stable throughout the flight, and the data return is safe and reliable.
In addition to the stable 5G network, there is also a pair of digital intelligent "eyes" to guard the drone's takeoff and landing throughout the process.
Multiple high-definition cameras are installed around the take-off and landing points of the Government Service Center. These cameras are connected to China Telecom's video network platform and combined with AI algorithms to monitor takeoffs and landings around the clock and automatically identify possible intrusions by unrelated personnel and abnormal equipment status in the takeoff and landing areas, which not only effectively ensures operational safety, but also reduces the burden of personnel inspections. In addition, all flight data are uniformly connected to the data management platform, realizing centralized control and intelligent scheduling of the flight process. From communication to monitoring to dispatch, a complete digital link makes drones "affordable, visible, and controllable."
At present, Hefei has opened a number of regular drone "air mail routes". The value of "air mail route" is not limited to the improvement of speed. For citizens, documents processed at the Government Service Center in the morning can be delivered to their hands in the afternoon of the same day through drone delivery in time for the noon delivery frequency. At the urban transportation level, drones bypass ground congestion and allow "one thing to be done efficiently" in the transportation link. For the postal industry, ground delivery personnel and vehicles can be freed from fixed lines to serve more surrounding areas.
The "Implementation Opinions on Strengthening the Capacity Building of the Information and Communication Industry to Support the Development of Low-altitude Infrastructure" jointly issued by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five departments proposed that by 2027, the coverage rate of ground mobile communication networks on low-altitude public airways will be no less than 90%, the multi-integrated sensing scheme will be further improved and mature, the level of low-altitude navigation services will continue to improve, and no less than 10 information infrastructure standards will be developed to form a number of typical low-altitude application scenarios for urban governance, logistics and transportation, cultural tourism and other fields.
China Telecom Anhui Company focuses on diverse scenarios such as low-altitude logistics and intelligent inspections, and is building a "1+1+4+N" low-altitude capability system. The cooperation between Hefei Post and Hefei Telecom will continue to deepen. A "low-altitude logistics network" covering urban and suburban areas is being rolled out. Drone mail routes will gradually break through the "last mile" delivery bottleneck in areas with inconvenient transportation such as mountainous areas, islands, and villages. (over)
