Huawei PoleStar Won 2018 Asia Mobile Awards ‘Outstanding Mobile Contribution to the UN SDGs in Asia’

[Shanghai, China, June 27, 2018] At Mobile World Congress Shanghai 2018, Global System for Mobile Communications Association (GSMA) announced Huawei's PoleStar solution as the winner of the ‘Outstanding Mobile Contribution to the UN SDGs in Asia’ award. PoleStar features a series of innovations in wireless devices, transmission, and energy and highlights the outstanding capabilities of integrating base stations with social public resources. "Huawei PoleStar enables base stations to be deployed in areas where mobile network construction was previously impossible or uneconomical. This heavily contributes to promoting low-cost mobile broadband for further urban development. PoleStar deployment can be realized by using the existing infrastructure to improve the overall utilization of land and urban facilities to support sustainable development among communities," cited from remarks of the award jury.

Huawei won GSMA’s ‘Outstanding Mobile Contribution to the UN SDGs in Asia’

‘Outstanding Mobile Contribution to the UN SDGs in Asia’ is presented by GSMA to honor the models and achievements of the Asian mobile industry in supporting UN SDGs. Huawei PoleStar breaks the barriers of leveraging urban public resources, promotes the equality of mobile broadband in urban areas, and helps achieve SDG9 (Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure), SDG11 (Sustainable Cities and Communities), and SDG13 (Climate Action).

Mobile connectivity is a strong driver for social development and economic progress. In today's world, there are still more than 2 billion people who are not unable to enjoy good mobile broadband services, of which a huge proportion comes from big cities. A better mobile network infrastructure potentially means an infinite number of new and unexplored opportunities. Limited resources in cities present big challenges for developing mobile networks. Insufficient space, high rent and construction costs, and concerns over the impact on environments emerge as huge obstacles in the way of base station deployments.

Huawei released PoleStar to promote the sustainable growth of urban mobile networks by reducing the costs and difficulties associated with base station deployment. Large-scale application has been completed in major cities for countries such as China, Thailand, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Kenya. With such deployments, these cities benefited from saving a tremendous amount of space and also enjoyed a significant improvement in the quality of local networks.

For example, in areas such as Bangkok's narrow streets, local operators deployed Huawei's PoleStar solution by using electric poles to bring mobile broadband to nearby small shops. This makes it possible for the owners of these establishments to support WeChat Pay and Alipay, a common and increasingly crucial practice to attract tourists from China. More than 2000 PoleStar base stations have so far been deployed in and around this city, saving a large amount of space equivalent to several stadiums that can accommodate tens of thousands of cheering spectators.

The high integration of wireless devices, such as Easy Macro and Book RRU, involved in PoleStar is credited to the flexible deployment that can reuse urban public resources, including widely available poles and billboards. PoleStar supports RRN wireless backhaul, an important technology needed to address the obstruction of signal transmissions. PoleStar supports various types of power supplies, including direct mains supply and blade power modules, to help reduce power supply costs.

Cao Ming, Vice President of Huawei's Wireless Product Line, said: "It's such a great honor for PoleStar to receive such esteemed recognition in promoting sustainable MBB development. Huawei is keen and eager to continue cooperating with operators, tower vendors, and industry partners and conduct further research and innovation into enhancing user experience and contributing to the advancement of sustainable urban development."