by SAVIOUS KWINIKA
JOHANNESBURG, (CAJ News) – HUAWEI and the Ghana Investment Fund for Electronic Communications (GIFEC) have partnered to connect millions of people in the rural areas through an innovative solution by the former.
An estimated 3,4 million people in 172 rural areas will be connected through the RuralStar Pro solution rollout, which makes it possible to provide voice and mobile broadband services to remote villages.
The rollout will increase Ghana’s mobile coverage rate from 83 percent to 95 percent.
The announcement has been made at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) Shanghai 2021.
David Guo, President of Huawei Wireless Network Site Product Line, noted that 600 million people in the world still have no access to mobile connectivity.
“The RuralStar Pro solution could provide connections for these uncovered areas at the optimal cost and fastest speed,” he said.
This solution integrates a baseband unit (BBU), a remote radio unit (RRU), and a relay device into a single module, enabling one module one site.
The power consumption of each site is less than 120W. The head of a village can deploy it independently and have an engineer configure it remotely.
Guo said this significantly reduced the end-to-end cost of deployment, and a return on investment can be expected within three years.
In the Ghana project, GIFEC will be responsible for construction.
Local operators will run the service. Profits will be split between them.
Over 400 RuralStar sites have already been deployed.
Abraham Kofi Asante, CEO of GIFEC, said more than 2 000 RuralStar sites would be deployed.
He said this would give an enormous boost to the local economy.
Guo said in the three years since its initial launch, Huawei’s RuralStar had been continuously evolving.
– CAJ News