Harbin installed and activated more than 14,000 5G base stations, reportedly providing strong signal coverage to townships and above areas in 2020 and 2021 in the region administered by the city in China's northernmost Heilongjiang province. 
 
As a result, Harbin was able to secure the requisite hardware foundations for the widespread application of 5G in medical care, universities, factories and various professional fields.
 
At a China Unicom 5G smart home experience pavilion in the Nangang district of Harbin, a smart speaker can manage all the devices. Faced with a water leak, a home can automatically close the faulty valve, while air conditioning can automatically be opened and the temperature maintained at 24 Celsius.
   
At the workshop of Acheng Iron and Steel Co, a company affiliated with the Jianlong Group, the 5G unmanned crane lifts dozens of tons of steel with a delay of less than 10 milliseconds. Using 5G is estimated to save the firm some 3 million yuan ($472,752) in costs per year.
 
At Harbin Engineering University, more than an hour of 4K online class data is being transmitted between hundreds of terminals The large bandwidth provided by 5G is said to allow real-time scenes to be moved into online classrooms through VR (virtual reality) and AR (augmented reality), making students' experience more intense.
 
Wang Tong, a tech expert at the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China, said that the main characteristics of the 5G network enabled the transmission of information between devices without passing through the base stations.
 
Wang added that the internet of things app replaced human intervention and as a result, artificial intelligence may develop rapidly.