Just over a year ago at MWC Asia in Shanghai, China Unicom was one of several local telcos offering demonstrations of 5G Advanced (5G-A) networks to show new and advanced use cases based on the evolution of standard 5G infrastructures. Now, the operator’s Beijing division has provided full 5G-A network coverage outside and inside the venue for the recent 2025 World Humanoid Robot Games.
As the world’s first international sports event for humanoid robots, the games set the stage for a fusion of technology and athletics, signalling artificial intelligence’s (AI’s) expansion into sports at scale.
The three-day event at the Beijing National Speed Skating Oval was described as part competition, part carnival. It featured more than 500 robots from nearly 280 teams worldwide to compete at their best across athletic, performance, industrial and healthcare contests, offering a stage for intelligent machines to demonstrate skills in events ranging from football to high jump, offering potential for use in factories and homes.
The organisers said that as the world races farther into the era of artificial intelligence, the event served as both a showcase and a knowledge exchange, pushing the limits of robotics design and performance, showing advances being made in the field of robotic showing decision-making, motor skills and controllers.
On the football pitch, three-a-side and five-a-side matches pit AI-powered robots against one another. Robot doctors diagnosed breakdowns with terms such as “right hip joint disconnection” and “left foot plate detachment”, armed with tools for quick field repairs.
As the event’s exclusive global communications partner, China Unicom said it was dedicated to ensuring millisecond-level network response and zero downtime with its 5G-A, AI, and all-optical network expertise through collaboration with partners such as Huawei.
The telco added that the 5G Advanced network – offering connectivity for both robots and spectators outside and inside the arena – was “cutting-edge”, characterised by its high uplink capacity, reliability and security, “significantly enhancing” the experience for tens of thousands of spectators.
The operator believes that such robust 5G-A networks will transform society by propelling humanoid robots beyond competitions and into full-scale commercialisation. It said that as the AI industry is developing rapidly, multimodal and cross-device interactions are reshaping personal experiences, IoT connections are growing “exponentially”, and AI is now woven into the fabric of core production processes, completely redefining workflows
Inside the venue, a 5G-A digital indoor system was developed utilising 300 MHz ultra-high-bandwidth spectrum. It delivered an uplink speed above 100 Mbps, allowing multiple 4K machine vision streams to be uploaded without frame loss. It also aimed to ensure air interface latency remained below 20ms, so robots could respond to commands instantly.
Outside the venue, a 5G-A 3D network coordinated 1:1 high and low bands to achieve downlink and uplink speeds of 10 Gbps and 4 Gbps, respectively. With this connectivity, 8K panoramic cameras merged footage live, media such as CCTV uploaded Ultra HD shallow-compressed signals in seconds, and crowds were said to have live-streamed and shared videos without lag.
China Unicom noted that embodied AI robots are a demanding AI application, requiring a specialised network that allows them to perceive their surroundings, make instant decisions, pinpoint their location precisely and coordinate with other robots. Beyond the event, China Unicom aims to inject strong momentum into the robotics industry.
“Our 5G-A networks currently serve users, and we’re upgrading them to support embodied AI as well,” said Qin Yang, deputy general manager of China Unicom Beijing.
“Our 5G-A network for this event reflects this progress. It dedicates a channel for spectators and a dynamically scalable one for robots, realising seamless connectivity for both spectators and robots even during peak usage. In the robot sector, 5G-A will also be key to enabling low-latency remote control.”
Samuel Chen, vice-president of marketing for Huawei’s wireless network product line, added: “At the humanoid robot games, the network [had to] support many robots, spectators and live-media streams. It needed to provide high uplink capacity, low latency, high reliability and wide coverage.”