PRESS RELEASE: In the eastern part of Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the world’s highest plateau, the Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture of Golog in Qinghai Province sprawls out across 76,000 square kilometers.

It is the home to 222,000 people, many of whom live nomadic lifestyles. The weather can be bitterly cold, with average temperatures falling to -4°C. At the same time, this area is rich in sources of clean energy.

Underserved by communications infrastructure, the people here have long lacked access to high-quality communications, education, and medical resources as well as channels through which they can sell locally-produced goods to the wider world. Golog prefecture is a classic example of community stuck on the wrong side of the digital divide.

A litany of environmental economic constraints mean that the kinds of mobile networks ubiquitous in other parts of the country are simply unfeasible here. The top challenge is base station towers. Heavy machinery is needed to erect towers, but the weather and road transportation often impede construction efforts. Permafrost makes laying optical fiber for data transmission entirely impractical, and besides, such construction would also impact the relatively unspoiled ecological environment of the plateau. To make matters worse, powering base stations is a challenge, since mains supply is unstable or insufficient here.

Aware of these challenges, but undaunted, China Mobile and Huawei worked together to develop an innovative solution that could connect Golog prefecture to the world and bring new cultural, educational, and recreational opportunities to its residents.

The fruit of China Mobile and Huawei’s efforts was the RuralStar Plus solution — an easy-to-deploy and functionally complete alternative to conventional base stations. All equipment, including solar power devices, lithium battery cabinets, integrated base stations, and IBT microwave devices, is installed on one pole, eliminating the need for towers, mains supply, and optical fibers. This solar-powered solution enables operators to quickly build energy-efficient, simple, and easy-to-deploy 4G and 5G networks, giving locals access to high-speed mobile services like voice and video calls, distance education, telemedicine, and online retail platforms. Moreover, 5G networks enable remote monitoring to improve the disaster prevention and relief capabilities of local authorities. Remote intelligent maintenance reduces the number of site visits required, which is crucial in sparsely populated areas like this.

The RuralStar Plus solution has made notable achievements, spanning:

  • Telemedicine: On a yearly basis, over 1,000 patients in Golog prefecture avail of telemedicine services from medical professionals from top hospitals in Shanghai several thousand kilometers away.
  • Distance education: Students here can join online classes led by teachers based in Xining, the capital city of Qinghai Province. Currently, more than 6,000 primary and secondary school age students in the prefecture participate in distance education.
  • E-commerce: 5G livestreaming boosts the sales of local horticultural and animal husbandry products like cordyceps and yak meat, increasing the annual sales revenue by CNY100 million. Locals also use livestreaming to promote the unique charms of their home at the roof of the world, attracting tourists and further boosting the local economy.
  • Ecological protection: Located in an ecological reserve, this prefecture is the habitat of rare animals and plants whose protection used to take a lot of manpower and material resources every year. With 5G networks, round-the-clock collection of data needed for conservation efforts can be automated, improving efficiency by more than 60%. Image recognition based on 5G and AI facilitates security operations in the pastoral areas, supporting the work of more than 120 rangers, while also helping to take some of the danger out of the job.
  • Intelligent animal husbandry: 5G IoT benefits the nomadic herders with intelligent real-time monitoring of yaks, recording and relaying the animals’ movements and vital signs. Not only are herders now more informed about the health of their yaks, they also lose animals less frequently. Year on year, the total number of yaks lost is down by more than 200.

In the foreseeable future, Huawei will partner with more operators to deploy RuralStar Plus in other underserved high-altitude areas, harnessing clean energy sources to bring 4G and 5G connectivity to communities in some of the most remote places on earth. Huawei’s operator partners are eager to bridge the digital divide with services such as distance education, remote healthcare, e-commerce, emergency communication, and village digitalization.