A self-driving tour bus roaming in Xiongan New Area (Photo: Yang Kunyi/GT)
China Mobile, the country's largest telecom operator, has launched a 5G and virtual reality (VR)-based immersive tourism business model in North China's Xiongan New Area with the help from Huawei, a significant move in the use of advanced mobile technology in the country.
The 5G- and VR-based immersive experience features imagery from a remote VR camera in the Baiyang Lake District of the zone with 360-degree panoramas of the surrounding scenery, which have been transmitted to a cloud server via the 5G network for processing and are updated on users' devices, according to a recent post published by Xiongan's official Weibo account.
Xiongan New Area has been designated as a national-level, high-quality modern economic zone that will host many of Beijing's non-capital functions and some of its relocated population.
The region also aspires to be a smart city featuring emerging 5G and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, with many technology companies including Tencent and Baidu planning to establish offices in the new area.
Visitors can experience immersive viewing with VR glasses using 5G networks and can also enjoy a 360-degree view of the scenery on TV screens. In addition, the footage can be updated for the management office and traffic patrol groups to better monitor passenger traffic and plan travel routes, enabling smart management of the tourism district.
Tourists who can't visit in person can view the 360-degree scenery through 5G mobile phones. With the 5G network's high-speed transmission, the Xiongan branch of China Mobile conducted a 4K ultra-high-definition livestream tour of the district using 5G mobile phones.
According to the report, China Mobile's Xiongan branch has already set up 30 base stations for 5G network transmission and demonstration projects, and 5G coverage of Baiyang Lake District has been completed.
A representative of China Mobile in Xiongan said that the next step will be to use the high-speed, large-bandwidth and low-latency 5G network to further develop a 5G smart tourism model and make Xiongan a 5G smart tourism district.
