The China Broadcasting Network (CNB) operated its first 5G base station on Saturday on the rooftop of the ST-Tropez Hotel in Changsha, capital of Central China's Hunan Province.

The base station, which is also the world's first 700MHz+4.9GHz5G station, is set up using 5G technology provided by Huawei. The base station is able to cover the ST-Tropez Hotel, among another building, a nearby street and the 40 hectares of Changsha's Window of the World, according to a report by Hunan Daily.

The CNB is the last of the major 5G network operators in China to put its 5G base station into use. China Mobile, China Unicom and China Telecom and CNB were each awarded the 5G license to run commercial 5G services on June 6 by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT). On October 31, three telecom network operators introduced the first 5G data plans in China, ushering in the commercial era of 5G.

However, according to the Hunan Daily's report, although the CNB is the latest entrant into mobile services, CNB's 5G frequency is 700MHz, which is lower than the 800MHz 2G frequencies. The low frequency allows each of the 5G base station to cover an area up to 10 kilometers with stronger penetration into buildings. Only 400,000 base stations will be needed to set up the 5G network in China using the 700MHz frequency, while the three telecom networkers will need 6 million macro base stations in total.