Huawei RuralLink Wins GSMA GLOMO’s ‘Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets’ Award

PRESS RELEASE: At the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2023, Huawei for RuralLink — Green, Simplified, and Evolvable Solution for Rural Connectivity took home GLOMO’s ‘Best Mobile Innovation for Emerging Markets’ award from GSMA, proving that Huawei’s continuous innovation in scenario-based coverage solutions for remote areas has been well recognized by the industry.

Around 40% of the world’s population still have no access to mobile Internet, and among those, hundreds of millions of people living in very remote areas are not even covered by mobile broadband networks. This has set the stage for Huawei to explore innovations that are able to expand mobile broadband to connect the unconnected while also being able to provide good experience.

Huawei’s RuralLink solution uses innovative unique technologies to address challenges in rural communications, and provides ubiquitous coverage with ultra-low cost and power consumption. This solution is the industry’s first to use microwave fronthaul technology. Rural sites can share baseband resources of existing base stations, eliminating the need to deploy independent baseband units. One RRU and one Channel Expand Antenna are capable of achieving three-sector coverage. Not only that, there is no longer a requirement for BBUs, which further reduces site power consumption. Only 4 PV modules are needed for supplying power to the entire site. With one-off deployment, RuralLink can currently support 2G, 3G, and 4G services and can evolve to 5G, providing long-term experience-guaranteed coverage for rural areas.

Ubiquitous mobile network coverage is critical for improving education and healthcare, and plays an important role in eradicating poverty, and protecting the environment. It is a prominent factor that aligns with the 5 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) — No Poverty, Good Health and Well-being, Quality Education, Reduced Inequalities, and Climate Action.

Aaron Jiang, President of Huawei’s Wireless SingleRAN Product Line, said: “We’re honored to receive this award from GSMA. RuralLink’s innovations in transmission and antennas allow green, simplified, and evolvable rural sites, and extend experience-guaranteed coverage to remote areas, enabling experience upgrade for more people, villages, and small and medium-sized enterprises.”

In line with inclusive development, Huawei continues to follow through on innovations in technology that helps remote areas improve digitalization, bring digital life to all people, and promote the balanced development of the global digital economy.