A factory in Ningbo, East China's Zhejiang province. [Photo/cnnb.com.cn]

Ningbo in East China's Zhejiang province recently unveiled a guideline for digital infrastructure construction during the 14th Five-Year Plan (2021-25) period, setting the goal to become a national benchmark city in that regard by the end of 2025.

According to the guideline, more than 40,000 5G base stations will be built in Ningbo by 2025, with 5G signals covering the whole city.

It will offer broadband speeds of 1,500 megabytes per second (Mbps) to those in rural areas and 2,000 Mbps in urban areas.

In addition, the city will strive to construct a nationally leading internet of things platform and over 10 national industrial internet platforms (projects).

Ningbo has made progress in the construction of digital infrastructure in such fields as 5G, IoT, city brain, big data, and industrial internet in recent years.

As of mid–November, the city had constructed more than 15,000 5G base stations, with signals covering its key townships and above.

It has also been listed among the first batch of node cities for the blockchain service network (BSN) in China.

A report released by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, as well as the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology in September ranked Ningbo first among 36 major cities in terms of urban network quality.