China-based telecom equipment market Huawei has launched RuralStar2.0, a rural network solution, for global telecom operators.
The innovative rural network solution – launched at the 2017 Global Mobile Broadband Forum in London — provides more distance, more voice coverage ensuring rural MBB access at low cost and shortening ROI periods to less than five years.
Mobile service providers are facing revenue crisis because the average revenue per user (ARPU) for mobile operators is $1 to $3 in scarcely populated areas. Telecom operators are reluctant to make huge investment because return on investment in traditional network deployment can take more than 10 years to recoup.
“Huawei will work with operators to develop cost-efficient, scenario-specific site solutions to improve site deployment efficiency,” said Cao Min, vice president of Huawei Wireless Network Product Line.
Rural telecom markets such as Ghana, Thailand, Algeria, and Nigeria have deployed RuralStar.
Innovation
Huawei focused on making innovations in transmission, infrastructure, base station design, and energy for developing RuralStar2.0. This solution addresses demands for voice and data services from the unconnected and increases operator ROI for rural network deployment.
The network solution provides rates of over 10 Mbit/s at cell edges and cell coverage of 5 km for rural MBB requirements on 2G, 3G, or 4G rural MBB networks.
Huawei’s RuralStar2.0 offers 2G and 3G coverage at a maximum distance of 60 km from the nearest tower-mounted site, providing voice and data (over 1 Mbit/s at cell edges) services and cell coverage of 5 km.
The company claims that RuralStar2.0 adopts non line of sight (NLOS) wireless backhaul, eliminating rental costs of transmission equipment and reducing Opex compared with satellite or microwave transmission.
NLOS wireless backhaul supports multi-hop backhaul, which allows for a maximum distance of over 60 km from the donor base station, extending network coverage. NLOS wireless backhaul switches high-rise towers used in traditional rural networks to low-rise poles, reducing site infrastructure costs by 70 percent.
Low-power base stations and transmission equipment do not require diesel generators for power generation and require fewer solar panels and batteries, which slashes Capex by 70 percent. Using pure solar energy saves O&M costs, in turn greatly reducing Opex.
Huawei has used omnidirectional antennas to achieve targeted omnidirectional coverage in a single cell at low cost. For cells with insufficient coverage, 90° high-gain antennas can be used to deploy the butterfly site solution.
This solution reduces the number of sectors from three to two, the number of antennas and RRUs by 1/3, and total power consumption by 30 percent as well as the CAPEX and OPEX compared with traditional sites. For a given population in a target area, RuralStar2.0’s innovations in these aspects reduce TCO by more than 50 percent compared with traditional site solutions.
