Drone base stations have been put into use in Zhuozhou, Hebei province to ensure phone signals for local residents and rescuers as original signal sources had been affected by days of rainfall and follow-up flooding.

Three aerial base stations were dispatched from China Mobile - one of China's major telecom operators - on Wednesday. As of Thursday morning one of them has been put into operation to provide emergency communication support, according to the province's emergency management department, cited by a report of xinhuanet.com.

Each station can cover an area of over 30 square kilometers and support 200 China Mobile users making phone calls at the same time.

The preparation for the base stations from another two major telecom operators - China Telecom and China Unicom - are underway, the report said.