Baku, Azerbaijan, February 27
By Fakhri Vakilov - Trend:
Huawei sees RuralStar as the most profitable solution for covering the rural areas of Uzbekistan for mobile operators in order to improve the standard of living of the population and effectively provide services to the state, the company told Trend in an interview.
Huawei said that the pilot project RuralStar in Uzbekistan was implemented on the network of mobile telecom operator UMS. The use of this solution allowed deploying an operator’s network in a remote area.
Moreover, the company is ready to implement this solution on the network of any operator interested in providing its services in rural areas of Uzbekistan.
As previously mentioned, this technology can improve the standard of living of the population and the efficiency of state services. Ubiquitous access to information contributes to the improvement of healthcare system, ensuring security in the region, and stimulates the development of e-commerce. Villagers will be able to use their phones for the safe and convenient accumulation and storage of funds and trading. RuralStar allows the improvement of the level and quality of education, providing students and teachers with quick access to information online.
Huawei stated that in 2017 the company launched the RuralStar 2.0 solution to reduce the cost of deploying mobile coverage in remote locations. The new solution was specifically designed to provide 2G-call, SMS, mobile payment systems, as well as broadband data services in rural areas.
Low energy consumption, convenient installation procedure, innovative technologies (including battery technology) and tower design - these advantages enable mobile operators to reduce the payback period to five years and contribute to building a network in emerging markets. To this day, this solution has been successfully implemented by 12 operators from 8 countries and regions, including Thailand, Ghana, Indonesia, Nigeria and Mexico.
The company also said that the installation and operation of traditional macro-objects requires a lot of expenses, much more than in urban areas, and the average income per user can be from $1 to $3, which is several times less compared to urban areas. Such conditions, of course, made it difficult for mobile operators to justify correctly the reasons for expanding network coverage in remote areas from a business point of view.
Cellular operators faced many difficulties, such as providing data transmission or installing a reverse connection with facilities, high costs for the construction of civil buildings, lack of sustainable power sources and the duration of network deployment over time.
Consequently, the recoupment of investments on traditional networks may take more than 10 years, of course, if they pay off at all. Such obstacles make mobile operators reluctant to allocate funds for the installation of this type and require very large subsidies from governments.
Huawei stressed that, for users of mobile services, RuralStar offers 2G, 3G or 4G broadband networks with a connection speed of more than 10 Mbit / s within a hundred kilometer area with coverage of 3-5 kilometers, which is more than enough for many small rural areas. RuralStar makes it possible to expand 2G and 3G coverage to 60 kilometers from existing macro-objects.
Huawei noted that the company in Uzbekistan operates in three main areas - providing telecommunications solutions for fixed and mobile operators, providing solutions for the corporate segment that covers the public sector, large enterprises, telecommunications integrators, and the third direction is the terminal segment.
For more than 19 years, Huawei has been offering innovative solutions for the development of ICT infrastructure in the Uzbek market, which allowed Uzbekistan to be one of the first in the CIS region to implement pilot projects and test 3G and LTE networks. Nowadays, Uzbekistan has a great potential to raise ICT development to a new level, and Huawei is always ready to support the country's leadership in this endeavor.
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