PRESS RELEASE: Recently, China Mobile and Huawei reported a breakthrough in bridging the digital gap that existed across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, the highest-altitude plateau in the world, with the innovative RuralStar Plus solution. This opens the region to more possibilities and opportunities.
Golog, a Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture in Qinghai Province, is located in the hinterlands of the plateau. It is home to 222,000 people and sprawls across 76,000 square kilometers with an average altitude of over 4,200 meters. Golog’s unfavorable climate and geography long left the prefecture with poor infrastructure. However, since 2020, China Mobile and Huawei have been going all out to implement a digital connectivity project that seeks to enact full 5G coverage across the prefecture. China Mobile has put 149 4G/5G base stations into service in the most populous county, and the 5G network covers all surrounding towns and villages, including more than 80 spots that previously had weak or no coverage at all.
To facilitate the operator’s deployments, Huawei designed the RuralStar Plus solution. This pole site solution incorporates solar power devices, lithium battery cabinets, integrated base stations, and IBT microwave devices, eliminating the need for towers, mains supply, and optical fibers.
Powered by solar energy, a source of clean energy that is abundant in the prefecture, the RuralStar Plus solution enables the operator to quickly build eco-friendly, 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. Moreover, 5G networks enable remote monitoring to improve the disaster prevention and relief capabilities of local authorities. Additionally, remote intelligent maintenance reduces the number of required site visits, which is crucial in such sparsely populated areas.
In the foreseeable future, Huawei will team up with more operator and government partners to deploy RuralStar Plus in other underserved high-altitude areas, harnessing clean energy sources to bring connectivity to communities in some of the most remote places on earth. Huawei is also eager to help partners capitalize on services like distance education, remote healthcare, e-commerce, emergency communication, and village digitalization, all while contributing to local economies, tourism, and ecological protection.