MTN, Huawei to connect rural Nigeria with voice, broadband services

MTN Nigeria and Huawei have completed the commercial deployment of RuralStar 2.0 solution aimed at providing low-cost long distance voice and mobile broadband services for remote local rural areas.

The RuralStar 2.0 solution would help link previously unconnected communities.

Voice and data traffic of new deployed RuralStar 2.0 sites exceed expectation, revealing the enormous telecommunication demand in rural Nigeria.

Nigeria has a population of 180 million and more than half of them live in rural villages, which are typically scattered around vast grasslands or forests. Additionally, mobile signal coverage is poor and many people cannot enjoy the convenience of modern mobile communication with villagers having to walk long distances to nearby towns to make a call.

“Everyone has the right to access the Internet. We are glad to see RuralStar improves villagers’ living standard,” Cao Ming, vice president of Huawei Wireless Network Product Line.

He said RuralStar is set out to create a healthy business ecosystem and connect the unconnected in emerging markets.

“Huawei will work with the industry to eliminate the digital divide in emerging markets so that more people can enjoy the convenience brought by wireless communications and mobile Internet,” he said.

MTN and Huawei jointly innovated and introduced Huawei’s RuralStar 2.0 solution to reduces the total cost of ownership by 50 percent for a given target coverage area in contrast with traditional site solutions.

Using low-band non-line of sight wireless long-term evolution (NLOS LTE) relay, it allows site deployment locations to change from high towers to low poles with a height of only 12 metres. This

reduces the site infrastructure construction cost by 70 percent.

In addition, low-band LTE relay allows for the single-hop transmission distance of up to 40 km and therefore can be used as a substitute for microwave transmission and costly traditional satellite narrowband transmission.

RuralStar 2.0 uses low power consumption equipment enabling pure solar energy for the power supply.