China has officially launched a two-year commercial trial of satellite-based Internet of Things (IoT) services to advance the country's efforts to build an integrated space-air-ground network, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced on Saturday.
The announcement was made at the China 5G+ Industrial Internet Conference, which runs from Friday to Sunday in Wuhan City, central China's Hubei Province.
Satellite IoT is a low-speed data service that uses satellite communication to connect a wide range of IoT devices, from industrial sensors to vehicles and vessels, enabling wide-area coverage in regions beyond the reach of traditional terrestrial networks. While the data rate per transmission is lower than that of mobile internet, the technology offers a vital solution for connectivity in remote or challenging environments such as oceans, mountains, and industrial corridors.
The commercial trial will last for two years, aiming to diversify the satellite communication market supply and support the safe and healthy development of emerging industries such as commercial aerospace and the low-altitude economy.
"Satellite IoT can provide comprehensive information services for vehicles, ships, drones, oil and gas pipelines, and industrial equipment, paving the way for a wide range of large-scale applications," said Liu Haijiao, deputy director of the Wireless Informatization Research Department of the Institute of Standards and Technology of China Academy of Information and Communications Technology
At an exhibition booth, Yao Wenxuan, director of the Solutions Center at Hubei Telecom, demonstrated a terminal capable of linking with the Tiantong satellite.
"This is a terminal that establishes a data link with the Tiantong satellite, and it supports a data rate of 9.6KB per second. It enables connectivity in areas that traditional conventional IoT technologies cannot cover, such as over oceans or in deep mountains," he said.
The initiative is expected to generate substantial demand for satellite launches, boosting development across the industrial chain, from satellite manufacturing to rocket launch services.
"Currently, we can produce 100 to 150 satellites weighing under 500 kilograms per year. Its applications are wide-ranging, including remote sensing, communication, and deep space exploration," said Liu Zhengfeng, deputy general manager of Hunan Satellite Technology Co., Ltd.
China launches commercial trials for satellite Internet of Things
A World Health Organization (WHO) medical epidemiologist on Sunday sought to ease public concerns over a hantavirus outbreak linked to a cruise ship, stressing that the virus is not airborne like COVID-19 and that the average person has no reason to worry.
Spain began evacuating passengers the same day from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius, which had anchored earlier off the Port of Granadilla on the island of Tenerife.
The MV Hondius departed Argentina on April 1 with more than 140 passengers and crew from 23 countries on board. The ship has reported eight infections, including three deaths. Six of the cases have been laboratory-confirmed as Andes virus infections, caused by a rodent-borne hantavirus endemic to South America and the only known hantavirus strain capable of limited human-to-human transmission.
Boris Pavlin, a medical epidemiologist with the WHO, said the cruise ship affected by a hantavirus outbreak had been carefully managed by Spanish authorities and posed little risk to the general public. "This is not COVID. The average person does not need to be worried about hantavirus here in this setting. These folks are being managed very carefully, very deliberately, by the Spanish authorities; they're getting off the ship, they are getting into small boats, they are being spaced apart in the buses so there's no risk to one another. Even if one were to become symptomatic -- we know that none of them were symptomatic as they have been leaving the ship -- they're going straight to their aircraft and they're being taken to their respective national jurisdictions," he said.
Pavlin said the exact source of exposure remained under investigation, but the initial cases appeared to be linked to a pre-cruise land excursion in South America.
"From what we understand of the initial cases, there was -- as one does often on a cruise -- there was a land-side excursion before the cruise in which places were visited that are home to these specific rodents that are associated with the Andes hantavirus. These are not worldwide rodents; the long-tailed rice rat is very specific to the Andes Cordillera region of South America, and that's where people who are exposed to the rodents were. So it was in one of those places they were exposed. We don't know exactly because there are several possibilities, and I believe that the Argentinian authorities are actually even going to look at that and try to do some animal sampling to get to the very bottom of it. But that part's not unexpected at all," he said.
The official praised Spanish authorities' handling of the ship and described the response as a closely coordinated international effort.
"This has been an extremely cooperative, collegial international effort. The Spanish authorities are very diligent and deliberate about what's happening here. There's nothing that would surprise us. I think that somebody might become exposed; we want to obviously make sure that people who are coming off the ship are not newly exposed to one another as they get off and go to their respective places, and we're not seeing that," Pavlin said.
But while the immediate disembarkation process had gone smoothly, he emphasized that health officials were not letting their guard down.
"However, the contact tracing and follow-up of every person who has been in even the lightest contact with the patients will continue until a maximum incubation period. In any case, there are contingency plans should someone become ill, and we know that it doesn't just spread like wildfire, so even if they were to become ill, we don't expect a large outbreak after this," the official said.
Cruise ship hantavirus outbreak "not COVID," poses low public risk: WHO expert
