China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology published its development plan for the information and communications industry. It covers 2026 to 2030, the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan period, and sets 13 headline indicators across 26 tasks. One of those tasks tells the country to begin 6G commercial services “at an appropriate time”.
That is a work item for the ministry and the operators it oversees. There are no 6G phones on sale and no 6G network switched on anywhere in the world, and the plan does not commit China to a particular year. What it does is put 6G into the document that decides where the country’s telecoms money goes for the next five years.
What the plan actually sets out
By 2030, the ministry wants:
- 50 5G and 5G-Advanced base stations for every 10,000 people
- 95 percent 5G user penetration
- 9,800 EFLOPS of intelligent computing power
- 1,700 exabytes of advanced storage
- more than 320 million gigabit broadband users
- 6.5 billion connections on communications networks
- 4.1 trillion yuan in information and communications industry revenue, about USD 604.8 billion
- 7 percent average annual growth in telecommunications business
Behind those numbers there’s 3.8 trillion yuan of cumulative investment in information infrastructure over the five years. One EFLOPS is a quintillion floating-point operations a second, so 9,800 EFLOPS is roughly six times China’s 1,590 EFLOPS in 2025.
He Baohong, chief engineer at the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology, describes the shift as moving “from building individual computing centers to weaving resources into a nationally connected computing network”. The plan wants hub, regional and edge facilities working as one pool.
What 6G is, and what has not happened
6G is the sixth generation of mobile network standards. The International Telecommunication Union calls it IMT-2030. There are however, two things that must happen before anyone can sell a 6G connection.
- First, the specifications. 3GPP, the body that writes mobile standards, will publish the first set of 6G technical specifications in Release 21 at the end of 2028, on timelines it approved in June 2026. ITU-R Working Party 5D starts taking IMT-2030 technology proposals at its 54th meeting in February 2027.
- Second, the spectrum. Frequencies for 6G get argued out at the World Radiocommunication Conference, and the next one runs in Shanghai from 18 October to 12 November 2027. Agenda item 1.7 covers new mobile bands, with the studies focused on 4.4 to 15.35 GHz. Until those bands are allocated and the specifications are frozen, nobody can build a commercial 6G network. China’s 2030 date sits at the earliest end of that timetable rather than ahead of it.
Kenya is still building the previous generation
Kenya had 84.1 million active mobile subscriptions at the end of March 2026, and mobile penetration of 157.7 percent. 5G accounted for 1.74 million subscriptions in December 2025, against 44.2 million on 4G, 10.4 million still on 2G and 5.7 million on 3G. The people who do have 5G lean on it hard, at 53.5 GB a month each in the first quarter of 2026.
Safaricom has 1,879 5G sites across all 47 counties as of 31 March 2026. Airtel group figure over the same year was 3,116 sites across six markets.
China had 4.958 million 5G base stations at the end of March 2026, roughly 35 for every 10,000 people, and the plan wants 50. Kenya’s population is about 53 million, which puts Safaricom’s 1,879 sites at roughly 0.35 per 10,000. There’s a small disclaimer here though: China counts base stations and Kenyan operators count actual sites.
For Africans, on the next frontier of communications, the dates worth marking are the third African preparatory meeting, running from 7 to 11 September 2026 in Tunisia, and WRC-27 itself in Shanghai from 18 October 2027. Those conventions decide which frequencies African regulators will have to hand out when 6G equipment eventually shows up.
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