China will support more companies to apply for commercial trials of satellite IoT services

China News Service, Beijing, October 20 (Reporter Liu Liang) Xie Cun, director of the Information and Communications Administration Bureau of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, revealed at a press conference held by the State Council Information Office on the 20th that in the future, more qualified companies will be supported to apply for commercial trials of satellite Internet of Things services, and further expansion of value-added telecommunications business opening pilots will be studied in a timely manner.

Data released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology on the same day showed that the total telecommunications business volume in the first three quarters of this year increased by 7.3% year-on-year, and Internet business revenue increased by 8.9% year-on-year from January to August.

Specifically, infrastructure capabilities have been steadily enhanced. China has built 5.254 million 5G base stations, 5G-A network coverage is gradually advancing, Gigabit optical network 10G PON ports have reached 33.4 million, and 10G optical network has been piloted in communities, factories, parks and other scenarios. In terms of computing power facilities, as of the end of September 2026, China's intelligent computing power reached 2592EFLOPS (exascale floating-point operations per second), a year-on-year increase of 146%, which strongly supports the rapid development of China's artificial intelligence industry.

The development vitality of the industry continues to be released. China Telecom, China Mobile and China Unicom, the three basic telecommunications companies, all rank among the top ten in the world in terms of revenue; 204,000 companies have been issued telecommunications business licenses, a year-on-year increase of 7.3%; the pilot program for expanding the opening up of value-added telecommunications services has been steadily implemented. By the end of September, the number of foreign-invested telecommunications companies has reached 3,455, an increase of 25% over the same period last year. A commercial trial of satellite Internet of Things business was organized, and two private companies were approved to carry out relevant pilot business.

China has carried out an orderly industrial 5G independent private network pilot and continues to promote 5G and industrial Internet to empower thousands of industries. According to Xie Cun, currently, 5G has been integrated into all 97 major categories of the national economy, and the industrial Internet has covered all 41 major industrial categories. More than 26,000 industrial 5G private networks and 1,260 5G factories have been built.

He revealed that in the next step, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology will plan to implement a number of strategic, leading and breakthrough major engineering projects, promote the upgrade of Gigabit and the launch of 10G, and accelerate the expansion and quality improvement of computing power facilities. Proactively plan for 6G technological innovation and strengthen the construction of a new generation communication network standard system. Support more qualified enterprises to apply for commercial trials of satellite IoT services, and timely study to further expand the pilot program for opening up value-added telecommunications services.