(Yicai Global) April 2 -- A court in the southern Chinese city of Guangzhou is adopting China Unicom's fifth-generation wireless technologies to facilitate remote trials.

Unicom, officially China United Network Communications Group, penned a deal with the Guangzhou Intermediate People's Court yesterday, the telecoms carrier told Yicai Global. The firm is building a 5G base station outside the court that will cover the building's entire 4,000 square meter area.

China Unicom began testing its remote trial technology with the Guangzhou Internet Court a month ago, eliminating the need for plaintiffs and defendants to physically appear in the courthouse. Judges were able to lead the trials using ultra-high-definition audio and video transmissions running through 5G.

China's three major mobile operators, Unicom, China Mobile and China Telecom, have all been testing various indoor and outdoor 5G applications in major cities recently. The country hopes to have 100,000 new 5G base stations up and running this year, compared with a global total of about 300,000 to 400,000, according to research from investment bank CSC Financial.

5G will need twice as many base stations as 4G, so there will be large-scale investment, CSC's report said, adding that operators are battling to get the most stations up and running.

New encryption technology available for 5G networks can also help protect the privacy of parties in court, China Unicom said, adding that 5G trials also use speech recognition technology to created automated records of proceedings

The carrier plans to set up 3,000 base stations in Guangzhou ahead of World Telecommunications Day on May 17, General Manager Kong Xiangbin told Yicai Global, adding that the company will be the first to cover the city's urban area.

China Unicom has worked with the country's biggest telecoms equipment makers, Huawei and ZTE, and several terminal manufacturers in order to test 5G in several Chinese cities this year.

At present, terminal 5G download speeds can reach about 750 megabits per second. But this could reach as much as 1 gigabit per second, or six times 4G speeds, due to a reduced user-end transmission delay, the firm's test results show.

Editor: James Boynton