PRESS RELEASE: Huawei Global Analyst Summit (HAS) releases goals for sustainable wireless network development

[Shenzhen, April 17, 2018] Huawei Wireless Network released its sustainable development goals for 2018, vowing to help the world achieve the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs) through innovative solutions. According to what is released at this year’s event, Huawei focuses on three core aspects. These include extending mobile network coverage to another 100 million users in rural areas, providing urban mobile networks with high-efficient base stations to reduce 800,000 m2 of land use, and cutting 600,000 tons of carbon emissions.

“The telecom industry is the first to make commitments to the United Nations’ sustainable development goals. Huawei is constantly committed to making the world a better for everyone. As a member in the telecom circles, we are obliged to bring the world new technologies, including 5G and clouds. It is also our responsibilities to make the world an equal, green, and sustainable haven,” said Cao Ming, Vice President of Huawei’s Wireless Network Product Line. “Keeping these ideals in mind, Huawei released a series of solutions, for example, RuralStar, PoleStar, TubeStar, and PowerStar.”

Wireless Technology Contributes to Urban and Rural Equality

As we enter into the era of mobile internet, the digital gap between rural and urban areas continues to widen. At present, we still have 800 million rural users around the world having no access to network coverage. Network connections can serve as a catalyst to promote rural and urban equality. For example, in rural China, a young fellow managed to earn a substantial sum of money via a live broadcast platform that for his parent’s generation was thought inconceivable. In Kenya, a woman was able to receive financial support from her husband (living far away in Europe) using Mobile Money. In Mongolia, a herdsman’s children were able to enjoy online learning over mobile networks in a tent while traveling across vast remote areas.

“In 2017, Huawei successfully brought network access to over 50 million people in rural areas. In addition to that, Huawei launched the RuralStar solution to enable low-cost, ultra-long distance voice and digital access for millions of users in rural areas. In 2018, this new solution will continue to make network coverage accessible to an additional 100 million people in rural areas,” said Cao.

RuralStar offers a simple option for network deployments and can be installed on trees or wooden poles and can be powered purely with solar energy. This base station supports self-backhaul over LTE networks, making transmissions possible without expensive satellite or microwave resources. The latest version of this solution, RuralStar2.0, can provide coverage to more than double the number of users while keeping the investment at the same level of traditional solutions.

Zero Footprint of Base Stations Improves Urban Living Conditions

As the United Nations Development Programme forecasts, the world’s population will continue to expand over the next decades, especially in urban areas of developing countries. In China, above 70% of its population will migrate to big cities. When it comes to locations such as India, this figure also stands high at more than 50%. A growing population demands more land to reside on and more communication resources to live on. In cities like Shenzhen, Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, and New Delhi, base stations of mobile networks are already in very close proximity and are situated to within hundreds of meters. When 5G commercialization kicks off two years later, the spacing between base stations will be even smaller, down to below 50 meters. Given that one tower needs 40 m2 of land, it is potentially very demanding to have such a staggering number of base stations in already overcrowded cities. The worst case is that there is a lack of new land resources to support 5G base stations.

“The entire telecom industry has a solemn mission to save land resources of urban areas while endeavoring to prepare for the upcoming arrival of 5G,” said Cao. “Huawei’s PoleStar deployments have reached 2,500, saving approximately 20,000 m2 of land, which is the same size of several standard-size football pitches. In future, PoleStar will be able to make urban lamp poles and electricity poles become smart enough to provide extra services, such as environment monitoring, ads demonstration, and security alerting.”

PoleStar is a lightweight solution that integrates base stations with lamp poles, electricity poles, and billboards in urban areas. It features zero footprint and seamlessly blends into various urban environments. Huawei also offers an innovative solution TubeStar that allows a base station to reside in a common pipe while providing the same processing capacity of an on-tower base station. More importantly, it only requires 2 m2 of land, raising the efficiency of land use by more than 90%.

Less Signal Transmission Helps Reduce Carbon Emissions

Last but not least, Huawei offers a new PowerStar solution that features tangible energy consumption saving. This comes as a part of its commitment to build green wireless mobile networks. Using artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze traffic demands over networks, this solution switches off part of the base stations when the demand remains at a relatively low level and restores full running status when the demand returns. For example, PoleStar switches off the 1800 MHz and 2100 MHz bands during nights while only retaining the 900 MHz to ensure basic coverage needs. The trial statistics showed 10% to 15% less energy being consumed for communications.

Continued development of mobile networks leads to an inevitable coexistence of GSM, UMTS, LTE, and 5G. In GSM, there were only two frequency bands, and this figure will rise to 20 as we envision the advent of 5G. With an increasing number of sites, bands, and channels over the course of moving forward, the desired amount of energy for communication networks will be set to increase by tens and even hundreds of times. Leading global carriers have all made ambitious commitments to energy consumption reduction. For example, Vodafone promised to reduce carbon emissions by 50% in 2020 (based on 2006 readings). France Telecom is also another company who admirably pledged to cut 20% of power usage.

“PowerStar uses an AI-based software solution to realize huge reduction in energy consumption. It has the potential to reduce energy consumption of mobile communication networks by 10% to 15%, reducing 600,000 tons of carbon emissions in the first year, which saves 15,000,000 ten year-old trees.” said Cao.