The waves of the Dadu River sound like drums, and the iron cables of Luding Bridge cross the sky.
90 years ago, the Red Army warriors climbed on 13 iron cables and braved the fire to seize the bridge and open the passage to the north; 90 years later, in the direction that echoes the Luding Bridge, a newly built Sichuan-Tibet Railway Luding Dadu River Bridge spans the Dadu River like a red rainbow, and the natural moat has become a thoroughfare. The iron cable bridge of the past was the road to survival and victory; today's railway bridge is the road to development and rejuvenation.
To commemorate the 90th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army’s Long March, the Information and Publicity Center of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and China Tower organized a publicity campaign with the theme of “Continuing the Spirit of the Long March and Striving to Build a Strong Country.” From October 27th to 30th, the interview team went into Sichuan and went deep into Kangding City and Luding County in Ganzi Prefecture, Hanyuan County in Ya'an City, Xichang City in Liangshan Prefecture and other places. They followed the extension of the communication signal and saw how it climbed over the mountains and ridges to reach the people who needed it most.
Connectivity: From "Bridge Capture Channel" to "Information Sky Road"
To seize the Luding Bridge by flying, we compete for seconds and open the passage. Today, some sections of the Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line High-Speed Railway with a speed of 400 kilometers per hour are reserved, and the communication construction is also "rushed" under extreme conditions.
The main line of the Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line High-speed Railway is 292 kilometers long and is scheduled to be opened to traffic in June 2027. The line has a designed speed of 350 kilometers per hour, and some sections have reserved conditions for further speed increases. It is my country's first high-speed railway with reserved speed conditions of 400 kilometers per hour.
The construction site of the Chengdu-Chongqing Middle Line in Ziyang City, Sichuan Province is a section of the speed-increasing area. Behind the 400 kilometers per hour speed is a series of real problems for communication builders: ultra-large wind pressure, ultra-high-speed switching, and greater vehicle body penetration loss.
"There are currently no mature construction standards in China for reference for public network coverage at such high speeds, which poses a great challenge to our technology and craftsmanship!" Gou Yetao, Communications and Development Department of China Tower Sichuan Branch (hereinafter referred to as "Sichuan Tower") pointed to the tunnel An introduction to a cave door in "This cave is equipped with communication equipment covered by the public network. There is one such cave every 500 meters. This door is specially customized and installed to ensure the safety of equipment under extremely high wind pressure. It is 10 cm thick..."
Along the tunnel wall, approximately at the height of the high-speed train window, a new spread spectrum 13/8 leaky coaxial cable was laid, and a rear-expanded bottom bolt leaky cable clamp was used. The pull-out failure load reached 25 KN, which improved the signal quality while ensuring the safety of the equipment. Buffering and decompression ports are also designed on both sides of the tunnel wall near the tunnel exit to ensure that the high-speed rail can pass through the tunnel smoothly and safely at ultra-high speeds.
站址落地推进同样难度不小。 Sichuan Tower promotes multiple departments in Ziyang City to jointly issue support documents to ensure overall planning and guarantees on site selection, land use approval, public resource opening and other matters; at the same time, it jointly conducts on-site surveys with operators and conducts multiple rounds of optimization plans to achieve 100% sharing of new towers. The project follows the principle of "railway main body, communication supporting facilities, synchronous design, synchronous construction, and synchronous commissioning", and coordinates the coordination of multiple parties to maximize the saving of site resources and shorten the construction period.
Since its establishment, Sichuan Tower has coordinated and completed the construction of 12 high-speed railways and 16 public subway networks, with a total line mileage of more than 3,000 kilometers and a tunnel mileage of nearly 2,000 kilometers. Starting from 2024, 5G transformation of 12 high-speed railways and 1 subway public network will be completed, involving 459 kilometers of tunnels. The giant steel dragon travels across mountains and ridges, accompanied by communication signals all the way.
The railway extends deep into the mountains, and communication signals also connect the villages on the cliffs.
Gulu Village, Hanyuan County, Ya'an City, is located on the cliff at the entrance of the Dadu River Grand Canyon. The vertical drop from the village to the valley bottom is more than 1,000 meters. The Yi population accounts for 62.2% of the registered population. It is known as "the village on the cliff and the Yi village on the ladder to heaven." This area has been stuck in a communication blind spot for a long time and is one of the most difficult points for universal telecommunications services.
Back then, the Red Army fought hard on both sides of the Dadu River Gorge in order to let the people live a good life; today, the battle to open up the "information sky" is also to prevent any people from being left behind.
Looking from a distance from the Maping Village Observation Deck, a newly built base station on the cliff near the Gulu Village Committee is particularly eye-catching. Li Tao from the Hanyuan Office of Sichuan Railway Tower recalled that when the station was built, roads were impassable and large-scale equipment and vehicles could not be reached directly. Tower materials, cabinets, and cables were transported in sections by manpower. The mountain slopes were steep and rocky, and the fog was heavy during the rainy season. The construction workers repeatedly surveyed over the mountains and ridges, taking advantage of fine weather to work in sections. Sometimes they relied on cableways to transfer materials, and the foundation stood on the cliff.
After the base station was built, changes fell on the lives of the villagers.
"When there was no signal in the past, villagers could only accept cash when selling local specialties, which was very inconvenient. Now, everyone can directly display the payment code, and electronic payment is much more convenient. Some villagers also sell products directly online through posting on Moments and Douyin." Xiang Chengxu, deputy secretary of the Party branch of Gulu Village, took reporters to the villagers on the other side of the canyon by cableway. "This is a farm restaurant under construction. In the past two years, Gulu Village has seen more and more foreign tourists thanks to the promotion of some self-media!"
A hiking enthusiast from Yibin told reporters: "It took about 2 hours to walk up from the foot of the mountain, and the signal was very good along the way. The hiking experience was great!" The hiking route that is now popular with tourists was once a mule and horse trail for villagers in Gulu Village to enter and leave the village. The village is getting more and more lively, and the loudspeaker at the end of the village is playing "Singing the Motherland", which is very suitable for the occasion.
Gulu Village is just a microcosm of the construction of universal telecommunications services in Sichuan Province. Over the past 12 years, Sichuan Tower has deployed more than 13,000 general-service base stations, supporting 100% 4G access in the province’s administrative villages. The canyon is no longer isolated, and the deep mountains have echoes.
守护：从翻越雪山到“数字防线”
The Red Army's long march across Jiajin Mountain relied on ideals and beliefs, as well as seeking truth from facts and responding scientifically. Today, Sichuan Railway Tower is building a new super base station on the Western Sichuan Plateau, also solving the problem of "communication lifeline" in an extreme environment.
Next to National Highway 318 in Dahegou Village, Kangding City, a 25-meter-high three-tube ground tower stands in the mountains. Niu Baohua from the Communications and Development Department of Ganzi Tower introduced that this is a new super base station built in September this year, specifically targeting the complex terrain and disaster-prone western Sichuan, and the shortcomings of traditional base stations such as weak disaster resistance and easy power outages.
"All new super base stations in our province are built using old stock communication towers and support 'dual links' - terrestrial optical cables + high-throughput satellite transmission. When the ground optical cables are interrupted due to disasters, they can automatically switch to high-throughput satellite communications without any sense. They are also equipped with 300 Ah large-capacity batteries, integrated integrated cabinets and self-starting oil generators, which can last for 72 hours of uninterrupted communication in the event of a power outage in the entire area." Niu Baohua said.
Currently, under the guidance of the Sichuan Provincial Traffic Management Bureau, Sichuan Tower has planned to build 146 new super base stations across the province, effectively filling the shortcomings of invulnerable communications in areas with high risk of earthquakes, flash floods, landslides and other disasters, and building a solid emergency communications lifeline in extreme scenarios.
Sichuan is located in an earthquake fault zone, and earthquake monitoring and early warning are related to life safety.
In Chulu Village, Shimian County, which is only a 20-minute drive from the memorial site of the Red Army’s forced crossing of the Dadu River in Ansunchang, an earthquake monitoring and early warning “general station” base station stands in the mountains.
The site takes advantage of the existing base station computer room, power supply system, site elevation, full-area coverage, and communication-level operation and maintenance to quickly deploy earthquake monitoring equipment, avoid repeated land acquisition and construction, and fill in monitoring blind spots in mountainous areas in the county. The equipment collects and transmits earthquake monitoring data in real time, provides local governments with second-level earthquake early warning support, buys the people prime time to avoid danger, and builds a strong earthquake safety protection network in mountainous areas.
From the communication lifeline in the extreme environment of the plateau to the ecological supervision over the city, the protective radius of the tower continues to extend.
In Wenjiang District, Chengdu City, Sichuan Tower has teamed up with the Wenjiang District Ecological Environment Bureau to reuse existing resources such as tower sites, electricity, and communications to build a "fixed-point monitoring + mobile patrol" three-dimensional air pollution monitoring platform integrating air, space and ground - Gaodian AI Video surveillance is on duty 24 hours a day, automatically identifying problems such as open burning, dust on construction sites, and illegal emissions from companies; in the unattended drone nest on the roof, the drone can rush to the alarm point in 5 to 10 minutes, equipped with multiple types of monitoring equipment to complete pollution traceability and evidence collection.
This solution does not require large-scale new infrastructure and saves construction costs by more than 70%. As of October 2026, the project has carried out a total of 2,676 patrol missions, discovered 172 environmental problems, replaced more than 5,000 manual inspections, helped increase the number of local good days by 10 days year-on-year, and installed an all-weather "smart eye" for precise management of the regional ecological environment.
From "communication towers" to "digital towers", more than 2,000 communication towers across the province have been upgraded to forest and grass fire monitoring "firewalls", involving 21 cities and states, covering more than 480,000 square kilometers of forest areas and grasslands; earthquake early warning, atmospheric management, forest fire prevention and other applications are constantly being implemented. The communication tower is becoming a solid foundation for digital governance in Sichuan. Behind this is the value choice of putting people first and life first, and it is also the continuation of the spirit of seeking truth from facts and scientifically tackling difficulties.
惠民：从彝海结盟到民生所盼
In 1935, Liu Bocheng and Xiao Yedan formed an alliance in Mianning Yihai. The Red Army exchanged hearts with the Yi people and won the hearts of the people for the Long March. 90 years later, in Xichang City, Liangshan Prefecture, Tower people built charging stations at the doorsteps of people's homes, continuing to write a new chapter of harmony between the military and the people and national unity.
In the public parking lot of Moon Lake Wetland Park in Xichang, next to Aerospace Avenue, an electric vehicle charging station is busy and orderly. The station is wholly-owned by Sichuan Iron Tower and operated in cooperation with Water Investment. It currently has 18 fast-charging guns and 1 slow-charging gun, and has planned to expand the capacity by 7 160-kilowatt integrated dual-guns.
Since its completion, the station has radiated to key scenic spots such as Qionghai, Lushan, and Jianchang Ancient City. It operates at full capacity almost all day long. It not only serves residents' daily energy replenishment, but also undertakes the needs of self-driving travel, official and operating vehicles, making up for the shortcomings of public charging facilities in Xichang's core cultural and tourism area.
The Hedong resettlement community in Xichang is located in the core area of Hedong Avenue and Hedong Street, Beicheng Street, Xincheng, eastern Xichang City. The area has a concentrated population, convenient transportation, and radiates to a large area of surrounding residential areas. In 2022, Liangshan Iron Tower and the Beicheng Subdistrict Office built standardized low-speed electric vehicle piles, deploying a total of 180 charging ports. Residents can connect and charge by scanning the code in 7 seconds.
In addition, all charging facilities have a 10096 unified service hotline and contact information for local operation and maintenance personnel. Users can provide timely feedback and resolution when encountering charging problems. Relying on the tower charging operation management platform, 7×24-hour online monitoring is implemented in the background to capture equipment failures in real time and respond quickly to improve user charging experience.
At present, Liangshan Tower has covered more than 60 communities in Xichang City, installed more than 4,000 low-speed charging ports, served more than 70,000 people, and built 80 safe and intelligent battery swap points for electric bicycles. It provides battery swap services to 3,000 industry users such as the Postal Service, SF Express, and Meituan, and supports the "Go Home with Full Charge" special action, reducing the hidden dangers of flying wire charging and corridor charging from the source.
"In the past, hidden dangers of flying wire charging in the community were prominent, including the situation of electric vehicles charging upstairs, which was difficult to solve through regular community inspections and persuasion. Now there is a charging parking shed uniformly constructed by the tower company. It is very convenient and cheap, and solves the problem of flying wire charging from the source." Li Fei, deputy director of Hedong Community, Beicheng Street, Xichang City, introduced.
So far, Sichuan Tower has built a total of 89 car charging stations, 342 charging guns, and 160,000 low-speed charging ports in the province, serving 5,498 communities and 2 million residents. It has built 729 grid-connected photovoltaic stations, providing a total of 3.278 million kilowatt hours of green power, which is equivalent to saving about 1,049 tons of standard coal and reducing carbon dioxide emissions by about 1,904 tons. From the photovoltaic panels of plateau base stations to charging ports in urban communities, green has become an increasingly distinctive background for Tower people on their new Long March.
From "communication tower" to "digital tower", from "information skyway" to "green network", China Tower is taking on the role of "national team" and "main force", transforming the spirit of the Long March into a force for progress in building a network power and digital China. On the new Long March, the Iron Tower people are still climbing and moving forward.
