As 5G technology enters its enhanced phase, 5G-Advanced (5G-A) is gradually emerging as a crucial underpinning for the intelligent evolution of the industrial internet. The industrial internet has specific requirements for network reliability, low latency and precision. Building on the foundation of traditional 5G, 5G-A delivers higher data rates, ultra-low latency and more accurate positioning capabilities, endowing the industrial internet with far stronger connectivity. At present, the integrated application scenarios of 5G-A and the industrial internet are being progressively implemented, demonstrating a powerful driving force in sectors such as energy and power, as well as mining and metallurgy.
Core Industry Applications & Practical Cases
The energy and power industry has leveraged 5G-A to achieve an intelligent upgrade of operation, maintenance and monitoring. State Grid Corporation of China has deployed 5G-A private networks at substations across the country, and combined with UAV patrols and smart sensors, it has realized real-time condition monitoring of transmission lines and substation equipment. This has boosted patrol efficiency by five times and reduced potential safety hazards associated with manual tower climbing operations. Hanchuan Power Plant is a vivid example of the application of UAV intelligent patrol technology. In January 2025, China Unicom Hubei and ZTE successfully completed the commercial verification of 5G-A integrated communication and sensing technology at Hanchuan Power Plant, enabling precise monitoring and trajectory tracking of UAVs around the plant area and effectively raising the plant’s low-altitude safety level. The plant adopted 5G-A integrated communication and sensing base stations, completing technical verifications of multiple functions including UAV trajectory tracking, intrusion detection and electronic fencing, which allows for accurate detection and real-time early warning of UAVs in the plant area. Test data shows that a single base station has a sensing range of over 1 kilometer, a distance judgment accuracy of sub-meter level, a 100% monitoring rate and a false alarm rate of less than 5%.
In the mining and metallurgy sector, 5G-A networks support the backhaul of high-definition underground video and the remote control of unmanned equipment. Enterprises such as Angang Group and China Huaneng have reduced manual operations in hazardous environments through this technology, leading to a drop in mine accident rates and simultaneous improvements in production safety and efficiency. In May 2025, “Huaneng Ruichi”, the world’s first cluster of 100 unmanned electric mining trucks, was officially put into fleet operation at the Yimin Open-pit Mine in Inner Mongolia. The Yimin mining area has actively deployed 5G-A networks, providing network support for the mining truck cluster through precise coverage of unmanned driving routes. These unmanned electric mining trucks have a maximum load capacity of 90 tons, with the comprehensive transportation efficiency of a single truck reaching 120% that of manual driving, and they are capable of continuous operation in an extremely cold environment of minus 40 degrees Celsius.
Policy Support & Industrial Scale Data
The integrated development and application of 5G-A and the industrial internet are also inseparable from policy support. Sustained policy support has laid a solid foundation for their integrated development. In January 2026, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the Action Plan for the Integrated Empowerment of the Industrial Internet and Artificial Intelligence and the Action Plan for Promoting the High-Quality Development of Industrial Internet Platforms (2026-2028). The successive release of these two important documents has clearly identified the integration of 5G-A networks and the industrial internet as a key measure for advancing new-type industrialization.
Relevant data shows that the application of China’s industrial internet has covered all 41 major industrial categories, the number of 5G-enabled factories nationwide has exceeded 8,000, the number of connected devices on key industrial internet platforms has surpassed 100 million sets, the scale of China’s core industrial internet industry is expected to exceed 1.6 trillion yuan in 2025, driving an increase of about 2.5 trillion yuan in industrial added value. The combination of 5G-A and the industrial internet has improved the efficiency and response speed of industrial intelligent applications. It not only effectively meets the needs of large-scale data collection and sensing, but also provides efficient support for complex industrial intelligent scenarios.
Core Advantages, Bottleneck Breakthroughs & Future Value
With its core advantages of ultra-reliability, low latency and high precision, 5G-A is breaking the technical bottlenecks in the development of the industrial internet and driving the industrial sector to accelerate its transformation from digitalization to intelligentization. In the future, as technology matures and improves continuously, 5G-A is expected to further unlock the potential of the industrial internet and become an important part of the process of new-type industrialization.
