Zoucheng City, Shandong Province, east China - Oct 17, 2020 (CCTV - No access Chinese mainland)
1. Car entering Baodian Coal Mine
2. Mining equipment
3. Various of staff members operating machine
4. Various of unmanned mining in progress
5. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Guo Ying, deputy manager, chief engineer, Baodian Coal Mine:
"In the future, we can use the unmanned mining method in shafts with excessive density of gases to significantly reduce safety risks, difficulty and intensity of work for frontline workers."
6. Various of inspection smart robot
7. Smart monitoring camera moving
8. Image of smart monitoring camera
9. SOUNDBITE (Chinese) Wang Guofa, academician, Chinese Academy of Engineering (ending with shot 10):
"Many issues in the underground space are more complicated than those on the ground. The realization of in-time control over the entire process of mining requires high capability of the communication technology. In fact, the 5G network for the coal mine can be taken as a superhighway network for smart mining."
10. Various of staff members working at centralized control center

The first highly reliable private 5G network for mining that was developed independently by China was officially put into operation in east China's Shandong Province on Saturday.

The network was firstly used at the Baodian Coal Mine owned by Shandong Energy Group in Zoucheng City.

With full coverage of 5G signals, the delay of data transmission in the shaft has been reduced from three or four seconds of 4G network to less than 20 milliseconds, thus realizing remote control from the ground and unmanned smart coal mining.

Besides, unmanned inspection with smart robots has also become true, which will help reduce laborious jobs with high risks by half and at the same time double the production capacity.

"In the future, we can use the unmanned mining method in shafts with excessive density of gases to significantly reduce safety risks, difficulty and intensity of work for frontline workers," said Guo Ying, deputy manager and chief engineer of the Baodian Coal Mine.

Currently, some coal mines are trying the public 5G network provided by communication operators, but with unstable signals and low reliabilities due to the long data transmission path, they can only perform inadequate command and inaccurate control, which brings about high risks in terms of dangerous operation including coal mine operation.

However, the highly reliable private 5G network newly put into operation has realized not only independent operation of data and signals in an individual mine shaft, but also dual-path transmission to ensure stable signals.

"Many issues in the underground space are more complicated than those on the ground. The realization of in-time control over the entire process of mining requires high capability of the communication technology. In fact, the 5G network for the coal mine can be taken as a superhighway network for smart mining," said Wang Guofa, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering.