A communication method, comprising: determining, by a base station, that at least two narrow beams are used to transmit data to at least two terminals, wherein the base station transmits a broad beam and the at least two narrow beams; and transmitting, by the base station, data to the at least two terminals on a same time-frequency resource by using the at least two narrow beams; wherein the broad beam covers a sector of the base station, coverage areas of the narrow beams completely fall within a coverage area of the broad beam, and the broad beam and the narrow beams have a same physical cell identifier, PCI; and the method further comprises: determining, by the base station, that the broad beam is to be used to transmit data to one or more other terminals different from the at least two terminals; and transmitting, by the base station, data to the one or more other terminals by using the broad beam; sending, by the base station, a cell-specific reference signal, CRS, by using the broad beam; and separately sending, by the base station, a channel state information-reference signal, CSI-RS, by using each narrow beam transmitted by the base station and according to the CSI-RS separately preset for each narrow beam transmitted by the base station, wherein CSI-RSs set for different narrow beams are different from each other. determining, by a base station, that at least two narrow beams are used to transmit data to at least two terminals, wherein the base station transmits a broad beam and the at least two narrow beams; and transmitting, by the base station, data to the at least two terminals on a same time-frequency resource by using the at least two narrow beams; wherein the broad beam covers a sector of the base station, coverage areas of the narrow beams completely fall within a coverage area of the broad beam, and the broad beam and the narrow beams have a same physical cell identifier, PCI; and the method further comprises: determining, by the base station, that the broad beam is to be used to transmit data to one or more other terminals different from the at least two terminals; and transmitting, by the base station, data to the one or more other terminals by using the broad beam; sending, by the base station, a cell-specific reference signal, CRS, by using the broad beam; and separately sending, by the base station, a channel state information-reference signal, CSI-RS, by using each narrow beam transmitted by the base station and according to the CSI-RS separately preset for each narrow beam transmitted by the base station, wherein CSI-RSs set for different narrow beams are different from each other. determining, by the base station, that the broad beam is to be used to transmit data to one or more other terminals different from the at least two terminals; and transmitting, by the base station, data to the one or more other terminals by using the broad beam; sending, by the base station, a cell-specific reference signal, CRS, by using the broad beam; and separately sending, by the base station, a channel state information-reference signal, CSI-RS, by using each narrow beam transmitted by the base station and according to the CSI-RS separately preset for each narrow beam transmitted by the base station, wherein CSI-RSs set for different narrow beams are different from each other.