Huawei successfully held the TECH cares forum during MWC 2026. James Zeng, Vice President of Huawei’s Wireless Network Product Line, delivered a keynote speech titled “Huawei Full-Scenario Rural Coverage Solutions Bridge the Digital Divide” at the forum.
He highlighted that as the world accelerates toward digitalization, network connectivity has become a key foundation driving social development and economic growth. However, in vast rural regions, the digital divide remains prominent, with hundreds of millions of people still in an “unconnected” status. Centered on the long-term mission of “connect the unconnected”, Huawei leverages its full-scenario Rural solutions to continuously advance rural network construction and sustainable business development, helping remote rural areas unlock social and commercial value in education, healthcare, agriculture, e-commerce and other scenarios.
Despite the rapid growth of the global mobile industry, as of today, there are still 300 million people worldwide who do not have access to network connectivity, primarily in remote rural areas. These regions suffer from weak infrastructure, lack of electricity and roads, and scattered populations. Operators face three major challenges in network deployment: high cost for towers and civil work, high cost for satellite transmission, and high cost for diesel generators and fuel. These multiple factors combined result in up to 10 years ROI to operators in remote rural areas, making it difficult to achieve a sustainable business model.
To achieve inclusive connectivity in remote areas globally, Huawei remains committed to innovation. We have pioneered the “3 Conversions” technology in the industry: convert tower to pole, convert diesel to solar, and convert satellite to relay. Through these “3 Conversions”, Huawei’s Rural series solutions can reduce cost to 20%~40% of traditional macro base stations, significantly lowering site construction costs.
Over the past 10 years, Huawei has continuously innovated its rural network solutions:
- In 2017, Huawei launched the RuralStar solution, achieving inclusive coverage for medium-sized villages with a population of 3,000 to 5,000.
- In 2021, Huawei introduced the RuralLink solution for large villages with a population of 5,000 to 8,000.
- And in 2025, Huawei innovates again and launched the world’s first RuralCow solution for small village with a population less than 3,000, building the simplified rural site with “1 box 1 site”.
Huawei has joined hands with global operators to build multiple replicable and scalable models for rural digital development.
In Zambia, Huawei has cooperated with operators to build smart villages. Muchila Village is located in a remote area in southern Zambia, with about 100 permanent households, including one school and one clinic. The village has long suffered from insufficient power supply and no network coverage, with backward education and medical conditions. After an on-site survey in 2024, Huawei adopted the RuralStar solution tailored to local conditions to deploy an affordable and easy-to-deploy mobile network in the village, enabling villagers to communicate with the outside world. Huawei
also built smart classrooms for the village school to improve teaching conditions, and provided a solar power station to address the village’s insufficient power supply. Huawei’s RuralStar solution has helped remote rural areas in Zambia take the first step toward improving lives through digital technologies. In the future, with the in-depth development of digital technologies, it will play a greater role in cultivating digital talents and boosting economic development. As a medium- and long-term goal, the Muchila Smart Village project model will be expanded to 100 villages in Zambia, benefiting more residents in remote areas and making clean energy and digital connectivity new drivers for rural revitalization.
In 2025, Huawei launched an innovative RuralCow solution, which realized the “last mile” coverage for the village with less than 3,000 population, and recently completed the world’s first commercial deployment in Nigeria. The solution highly integrates BBU, RRU and transmission capabilities into one, realizing a simplified “1 Box, 1 Site” architecture. This design enables agile transportation and installation, greatly reduces engineering complexity, and allows fast on-air deployment within one day. As per calculation, in this case, RuralCow can shorten the ROI from about 10 years to 1.5 years, creating a positive business cycle and laying a solid foundation for operators to continuously build networks in remote areas. Meanwhile, RuralCow is equipped with Huawei’s GigaGreen
technology, which significantly reduces equipment power consumption and increases the backup power duration at sites by 44%, making it more suitable for off-grid or power-constrained scenarios. In addition, RuralCow does not rely on fiber or microwave transmission, with a backhaul distance of up to 30 kilometers in non-line-of-sight scenarios, significantly improving coverage in remote areas. It also integrates intelligent remote O&M, reducing on-site tower climbing operations and improving maintenance efficiency.
Huawei’s full-scenario Rural solutions have been deployed on a large scale worldwide. To date, this solution has provided connectivity to 170 million people in remote areas across 80+ countries, including Ghana in Africa, Indonesia in Asia Pacific, Peru in Latin America, and Oman in the Middle East. The solution helps operators connect the unconnected and has received high recognition from the industry, winning 4 GLOMO awards. It has formed a complete closed loop from technical system to business model: solving not only the technical challenge of “whether it can be built”, but also the commercial challenge of “whether it is worth building”. In this process, the network has become more than just a communication infrastructure, and it has evolved into a digital foundation for educational equity, inclusive healthcare, agricultural income growth and rural governance.
Huawei will never stop innovation for inclusive connectivity! In the future, we will continue to cooperate with partners such as global operators, governments and international organizations to launch more innovative Rural series solutions, thereby bridging the digital divide and enriching communication and life for everyone!
source : www.mobileworldlive.com
