Qualcomm expanded its Chinese telecom footprint in a 6G demo with China Mobile.

Claimed to be a world-first operator–chipmaker validation, Qualcomm China worked with the operator on a 6G prototype base station and terminal using the upper 6 GHz (U6G) band (6425–7125 MHz) with 3GPP-defined wide-bandwidth baseband and radio frequency RF alignment requirements.

Carried out at China Mobile’s Collaborative Innovation Base, the test utilized Qualcomm’s 4T8R U6G terminal prototype, which touts 4 transmit and 8 receive chains. Integrated together were the U6G band, a 400 MHz downlink and 200 MHz uplink ultra-large channel bandwidth, plus a 128-channel ultra-large massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) base station.

According to both companies, the demonstration confirmed the feasible co-evolution of future 6G networks, terminals, and services. The development follows China’s 6G push with the launch this year of its second phase of technical trials. The drive helps form part of China’s 15th Five-Year Plan running from this year to 2030, which aims to steer the country in areas such as artificial general intelligence (AGI), sovereign semiconductor stacks, and quantum networking.

China’s advancements in 6G have since seemingly trumped American efforts, first with the launch of a pre-6G test network in the city of Nanjing, which touted support from Qualcomm, and later with the approval of the 6 GHz band for large-scale 6G field trials and technical standardization.

Reports from Chinese state media meanwhile claim the country accounts for approximately 40% of global 6G patent filings.

Qualcomm is no stranger to Chinese partnerships, with the likes of China Telecom, China Unicom, China Broadnet, and China Mobile joining its coalition it unveiled at MWC Barcelona 2026 to accelerate the development and global deployment of 6G.

Commenting on the China Mobile partnership, Stan Zhuang, SVP of engineering at Qualcomm Technologies, said the trial demonstrated “the value of industry collaboration in driving systematic verification” while accumulating “the first batch of end-to-end measured data conforming to 3GPP definitions for the industry to evaluate the use of the U6G band, providing important reference for subsequent 6G terminal RF design.”

Huang Yuhong, president of China Mobile Research Institute, pointed to an open future for 6G work in the country, commenting: “We look forward to deepening cooperation with global industry partners to jointly promote 6G technology standards and industrial applications, enabling 6G to better empower the development of society in the intelligent era.”