China Unicom announced today that on June 5, a commercial 5G network was completed in a coal mine in northwest Shanxi province that is 800 meters underground.
The network in the mine, called Pangpangta Mine, is China's first large-scale deployment of a commercial underground 5G network in a coal mine.
According to China Unicom, when deploying 5G networks underground, equipment explosion-proof and safety is the key, 5G equipment has high power and many antennas, and there are many technical difficulties in underground explosion-proof safety.
In June 2020, China Unicom passed the audit of the 5G underground coal mine communication system expert committee of the National Center for Safety Standard, indicating that the 5G base station's high-bandwidth feature can fully support the data transmission of intelligent working face and has the ability of safe application and large-scale promotion.
The mine has built a super-converged high-quality network that integrates 4G, 5G, and NB-IoT, with a measured network bandwidth of more than 50G and a transmission delay of as little as 10ms.
Based on this network, the mine has successfully built intelligent applications such as video capture, intelligent analysis, comprehensive perception, 3D display, equipment health management and VR HD live streaming.