China Telecom and ZTE Jointly Craft a New Mobility Blueprint with 5G Intelligent Vehicle

Integrating 5G-A private networks and nationwide multi-DNN routing for end-to-end vehicle intelligence

Partner Content

Rethinking Solutions for Industry Challenges

The automotive industry is in a fiercely competitive phase, with automakers facing pressures like cost control, shorter delivery cycles, and enhanced intelligent driving experiences. Meanwhile, 5G network implementation confronts dual hurdles: For manufacturing, it must support over 3,000 concurrent vehicle connections, meeting high-capacity and high-reliability demands across more than ten services (e.g., vehicle testing, large-scale OTA upgrades). For wide-area usage, it needs nationwide coverage to satisfy high concurrency, low latency, and data security requirements in complex inter-provincial collaboration scenarios—laying a solid technical foundation for smart cockpits and assisted driving.

How to promote in-depth integration of communication technologies and intelligent vehicles to explore new breakthrough paths? How to use one unified, efficient network to meet the complex needs of the entire lifecycle from manufacturing to usage, achieving maximum value return with minimal investment? These have become crucial propositions urgently needing solutions for the intelligent connected vehicle industry. Bilateral Cooperation: Factory-to-User 5G Intelligent Vehicle To address these pain points, China Telecom, in partnership with ZTE, proposed an innovative "Factory-to-User" solution. Leveraging 5G to achieve "one-card connectivity",it links two core segments—factory manufacturing and wide-area usage—spanning the entire vehicle lifecycle. This solution has become a key driver for cost reduction, efficiency gains, and faster deliveries.

Factory-Side Deployment

China Telecom and ZTE deployed a cost-effective 5G-A private network at the plant, leveraging technologies like inter-frequency SuperMIMO, 5QI-level service scheduling, and cross-cell capacity collaboration to more than double network capacity—precisely matching the factory's high-bandwidth and high-concurrency network needs. In practical applications, wireless data interaction replaces the traditional OBD (On-Board Diagnostics) wiring mode in vehicle-machine function testing, eliminating manual plugging and unplugging, improving cloud-based testing efficiency, and effectively shortening test time. Additionally, on outdoor road test tracks, test data such as vehicle-level static and dynamic sound AI analysis can be uploaded in real time; in finished product warehouses, OTA software synchronization efficiency has been significantly enhanced, with 200 vehicles completing batch concurrent downloads in 1 hour—reaching an industry-leading level.

Moreover, 5G-A intelligent vehicle private network features intelligent tidal scheduling, which can automatically sense changes in traffic demand and production rhythms to dynamically optimize resource allocation, with 24/7 two-shift operation. During daytime production, it prioritizes key operations such as final assembly workshops; at night, it switches to finished product warehouses to concentrate bandwidth for batch OTA upgrades. Through base station resource sharing and dynamic power adjustment, the 5G network significantly reduces hardware investment and O&M costs, achieving "one network for multiple uses, cost reduction via the network".

Wide-Area Deployment

For the diverse needs of complex in-vehicle traffic services, China Telecom pioneered the industry's first nationwide multi-DNN (Data Network Name) customized private network + LBO (Local Break Out) routing mode (i.e., multi-service dedicated channels + local low-latency offloading). Through differentiated channel design, it precisely matches various data transmission scenarios: the vehicle control data channel focuses on core demands of high real-time performance and high security; the in-vehicle entertainment and on-board WiFi channels prioritize local internet access to ensure high-speed and stable networks; the OTA upgrade channel balances high security and moderate real-time performance requirements. Currently, 26.7% of in-vehicle traffic connects to the core network locally via LBO, effectively eliminating lags in in-vehicle internet applications and significantly enhancing the smoothness of intelligent driving experiences.

Meanwhile, they built the industry's first 5G intelligent vehicle operation platform, which enables full-network map monitoring and real-time analysis of session and traffic data across 31 provinces. Combined with proprietary configuration audit and dial testing functions, it automatically verifies full-network configurations through standard and custom templates, effectively avoiding service anomalies caused by human errors and significantly improving operational efficiency. Furthermore, a specially constructed remote disaster recovery UPF can support 1.4 million vehicle accesses and enables smooth scalability to match the vehicle growth trend.

Broad Prospects, Promising Future

The efficient and low-cost "one-card connectivity" 5G intelligent vehicle model aligns with the sustainable needs of automotive manufacturing business models. With its high replicability, it will quickly expand to more NEV factories, accelerating the penetration of 5G vehicle connectivity. According to the "China ICV(Intelligent Connected Vehicle) Industry Operation Outlook and Investment Prospect Research Report (2025-2030)" released by China Report Hall, the scale of China's ICV market is expected to exceed 1 trillion RMB in 2025, while the global ICV market size reached 228.1 billion US dollars in 2024 and is projected to surpass 1.5 trillion US dollars by 2030.

This innovation not only injects new-quality productive forces into the NEV industry but also drives the transportation revolution and green sustainable development. In the future, it is poised to lead the industry into a new phase, delivering smarter, more convenient, and greener mobility experiences for people.

Contributed by ZTE.