China Mobile has officially launched a new 5G-A super uplink initiative, framing faster uplink performance as a key requirement for AI-era mobile services after field demonstrations showed peak upload speeds above 1Gbps.
The announcement was made at the operator’s 5G-A Super Uplink launch conference in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. At the event, China Mobile released its white paper on the evolution and planning of 5G-A super uplink technology and said it is establishing a dedicated test base that will be open to industry partners in order to speed up coordination across networks, devices, and services.
China Mobile said it has now deployed more than 2.84 million 5G base stations, covering more than 97% of the population in China. The operator also said it serves over 660 million 5G users and supports 57,000 industry application cases across 91 major sectors of the national economy.
As part of its move from standard 5G toward 5G-A, the company said it has built what it calls a “3+2+3” uplink enhancement framework. That includes adjustments to frame structure in the 4.9GHz band, scaled deployment of SUL, or supplementary uplink, and uplink three-carrier aggregation, along with work on high-power two-channel 700MHz terminals and uplink data-compression improvements.
In the company’s description, super uplink uses the enhanced time-frequency aggregation and multi-band coordination capabilities of 5G-Advanced to raise terminal-side uplink transmission from the traditional hundred-megabit range to the gigabit level. The goal is to better support use cases like high-definition video return feeds, real-time cloud interaction, embodied AI control, cloud gaming, and AI agents that need large-bandwidth, low-latency upstream connections.
To tackle the mismatch between network capability on one side and terminals and the broader ecosystem on the other, China Mobile said it is launching a formal action plan around 5G-A super uplink. The company said the initiative is meant to support innovation in areas including video livestreaming, cloud gaming, AI agents, and embodied intelligence.
IT Home also noted that during the conference, China Mobile Zhejiang and partner companies set up a 5G-A super uplink Mobile AI ecosystem alliance.
During the technology demonstration segment, Zhejiang Mobile general manager Yang Jianyu said the hard part of ubiquitous intelligent connectivity is uplink performance. He argued that traditional network design focused mostly on downlink demand, leaving uplink peak speeds at around the hundred-megabit level. Zhejiang Mobile said it has already completed key technical validation for the new approach and built what it describes as the country’s first 5G-A × AI large-uplink demonstration zone at Xixi Wetland, where a single user reached a peak uplink speed of 1Gbps.
According to the company, China Mobile was the first in the country to commercially deploy 5G-A in Hangzhou in March 2024. It now says Zhejiang Mobile has achieved continuous 5G-A coverage in major urban districts across the province, with more than 20,000 5G-A base stations and over 12.5 million 5G-A users served.
At the event, on-site testing reportedly showed instantaneous network peaks above 1Gbps on the super uplink setup. One of the demonstration scenarios involved a quadruped robot using the broader uplink coverage to adjust its gait in real time based on terrain, complete smart pickup and delivery tasks, and act as an intelligent follow-shot camera that uploads high-frequency image data to the cloud for processing.
