Embodiments of the present invention disclose a system information transmission method, a base station, and user equipment. The method includes: sending, by a first base station, system information of the first base station to user equipment at a frequency of the first base station, so that the user equipment accesses the first base station; then, receiving identifiers of coverage base stations that cover the user equipment and access capability information of the user equipment that are sent by the user equipment, where the access capability information is used to indicate a target frequency band that the user equipment is allowed to access; and determining, by the first base station from the coverage base stations, one or more target base stations whose frequencies are located in the target frequency band, and sending system information of the one or more target base stations to the user equipment, so that the user equipment selects system information of one target base station from the system information of the one or more target base stations as system information of a second base station, and accesses the second base station. According to the embodiments of the present invention, system information of a first base station is sent cyclically, and system information of a second base station is sent on demand, which decreases load of a broadcast channel and reduces power consumption of user equipment.