Huawei RuralStar 3.0, successor of RuralStar 2.0 Lite, coming in 2020

At MWC 2019, Huawei announced RuralStar Lite, the successor or RuralStar 2.0. The press release says:

At the Mobile World Congress 2019, Huawei released an innovative rural network solution, RuralStar Lite. This solution is specialized to cost-efficiently bring voice and mobile broadband (MBB) services to rural villages with a population of 500 to 1000 people while keeping the return on investment (ROI) period within three years for operators.

Huawei released the RuralStar solution in an effort to bring mobile connections to these unconnected rural areas. This solution has reached more than 90 networks worldwide, serving to provide mobile access for hundreds of millions of people. For most of them, it's the first time in their lives they have ever enjoyed access to the mobile world thanks to this solution.

Picture source: maxwireless on Twitter

Boasting three significant innovations, RuralStar successfully addresses a number of long-standing issues of network development in rural areas where transmission is difficult to reach, infrastructure is costly to build, the power supply is unstable, and deployment requires a long time to complete. For operators, the ROI period can be within three years for a rural network that covers more than 1000 users. To expand connections to unconnected villages having a population of 500 to 1000 people, Huawei released the RuralStar Lite solution to accommodate the local service characteristics of few connections and small coverage areas.

RuralStar Lite features a power consumption of as low as 200 watts. Fitted with four solar panels, this solution greatly simplifies power supply. It allows all related equipment to be installed on poles with a height of 6 m to 9 m, without the need to install supporting rods and build fences. With these advantages added together, project costs are significantly reduced and the total cost of ownership (TCO) decreases markedly.

RuralStar Lite has so far been successfully deployed in Zambia. The deployment demonstrates that RuralStar Lite is able to extend voice and data services to 500 to 1000 users in a village covering a radius of 1 km to 2 km. In addition, the ROI period is expected to be less than three years for operators.

Interestingly, there isn't much information available on the solution even after all this time. While this is a good solution and has been promoted by operators like MTN, there isn't much information about the specifications either. Looking at the slide from MTN above, RuralStar is being deployed at Rural sites. As the requirement is to deploy GSM, UMTS and LTE, one assumption would be that the RuralStar can handle all of these. Whether this would keep the radio head as it is or not, I am not sure.

The above picture shows an example RuralStar site deployed by MTN. The deployment uses LTE backhaul so works as a relay. The small problem with this is that a Macro site from Huawei is required for this approach to work. Without a Huawei macro, this site would need another backhaul solution.

There are also other vendors looking at the same market like AMN, IP.Access, Airspan, Parallel Wireless, Mavenir, etc.also looking at providing alternative solutions for the same problem.

MTN is also looking at OpenRAN to improve it's rural coverage footprint. In a recent press release, it announced:

MTN is projecting to deploy more than 5,000 sites in rural areas across its 21 operations, bringing 2G, 3G and 4G connectivity to areas that were previously unconnected. In order to realise this goal, MTN will rely on an ecosystem of partners who will bring their expertise to build and maintain the sites, utilising a full turnkey approach.

MTN operations in Uganda and Guinea Conakry are already benefiting from this technology, as MTN has also partnered with the likes of VANU, Parallel Wireless and NuRAN Wireless to deliver the technology.

As one of the foremost members of the Telecom Infrastructure Project (TIP), MTN carries out solution testing on all hardware and software elements at its state-of-the-art head office in Johannesburg, South Africa. The TIP initiative aims to define 2G, 3G and 4G RAN solutions based on general-purpose, vendor-neutral hardware and software-defined technology.

By continuing to accelerate innovation through initiatives such as OpenRAN, MTN continues to lead the delivery of a bold new digital world, solidifying its position as a leading mobile operator in the market.

Regardless of the approach, mobile users in Africa will ultimately be the winners!

Related Posts:

• Huawei's RuralStar: Taking the fight to low cost small cell vendors
• MTN sees future in 3G
• Africa Mobile Network and MTN connecting Zambia
• Internet para todos: Telefonica and Parallel Wireless on a mission to connect 100 Million Unconnected
• AMN's Ultra-low cost sites
• Telefonica, Mayutel, Facebook & Parallel Wireless: Connecting the Unconnected in Peru (#InternetParaTodos)

5G CrowdCell: World's First 5G OpenRAN Small Cell

I explained about Open RAN in a tutorial here. In the recent TIP Summit, there was a lot of discussion of Open RAN. In their presentation, Miguel Marin, Technology Director, AMAP, Vodafone talked about world's first 5G OpenRAN small cell. Known as the crowdcell, it can be seen in the picture below.

I wrote about Crowdcell earlier here. While it was more in an initial stage then, it is already working and under trials in Turkey. The video below shows a demo of crowdcell from TIP Summit 2019



You can learn more about CrowdCell on TIP website here.

This video from Lime Microsystems from last TIP Summit explains the CrowdCell concept.

TIP Summit 2018 from Lime Microsystems on Vimeo.

It should be borne in mind that the TIP website says that CrowdCell is intended for extending indoor coverage. Sprint's / Airspan's MagicBox is solving exactly the same issue. You can read more about that here. The only real difference here is that CrowdCell is based on OpenRAN architecture and principles.

Parallel Wireless has a similar solution for outdoors. You can read more about that here and here.

Related Posts and Articles:

• A quick tutorial on Open RAN, vRAN & White Box RAN
• TIP Summit 2019 Opens the Floodgates for Democratised Telco Infrastructure
• CrowdCell heads for TIP
• Ultimate Guide to the Telecom Infra Project (TIP)
• Small Cells at Mobile World Congress 2017 (#MWC17)
• "Vehicular CrowdCell" or "Vehicular Small Cell" and the 5G plan

CrowdCell heads for TIP

Recently I wrote about Facebook's Telecom Infra Project (TIP) here. The following is from a recent announcement coinciding with MWC:

In our existing project groups, there are numerous TIP technologies that are moving from the lab stage to field and production trials. Each trial has operator sponsorship and includes key members of our technology ecosystem. Together, these TIP teams are working to validate technologies, share learnings, and accelerate toward commercialization at scale. Simultaneously, TIP members are contributing designs and specifications for new technologies and building new network tools.

Our TIP community is also growing and expanding in scope to address new challenges. Over the last month, TIP has added three new project groups and subgroups: Crowd Cell, Power and Connectivity, and Disaggregated Cell Site Gateways. At MWC, we are also announcing a new TIP community lab near BT’s Adastral Park campus in the UK and more than €100 million in venture capital funding available for infrastructure-focused startups participating in the TIP Ecosystem Acceleration Center (TEAC) in Germany.

In addition, we are excited to welcome some of TIP’s newest members: China Unicom, Sprint, and Telenor. They join more than 500 companies around the world that are active within TIP.
...

Crowd Cell is a new project group led by Vodafone. Crowd Cell is a concept based on relay architecture to help extend the range of existing cellular networks. Due to its plug-and-play design, Crowd Cell can be a rapid and low-cost small cell solution for traditional 4G networks. This project will focus on creating a Crowd Cell by leveraging generic hardware and open source designs for software to minimize costs through this “one design” flexible platform.
...

I blogged about the CrowdCell concept back in 2016 here. Then there were updates on the CrowdCell at MWC 2017 which I blogged here. This year, as the TIP announcement says, Vodafone is taking the CrowdCell to Telecom Infra Project. The following is from Vodafone's announcement:

Vodafone is developing new technologies designed to enable the cost-effective deployment of base stations in currently unconnected areas of Africa and India. The deployment will be supported by Vodafone’s new Open RAN technology and Facebook’s OpenCellular wireless access platform, which were developed within the Telecom Infra Project (TIP).

Open RAN technology significantly reduces the costs of rolling out networks in rural areas, fundamentally improving the economics of providing data and voice services to millions of unconnected people.  This new approach is expected to reduce the cost of radio network equipment by up to a third.

Vodafone also believes Open RAN technology will jump-start the establishment of an end-to-end industry of software and hardware vendors and integrators that will drive innovation, which is critical for achieving such a complex endeavour.

Picture Source: Michael Thelen

Vodafone has already conducted successful trials in India with two new vendors that have developed bespoke high-power base stations using software-defined radio and general purpose hardware based on Vodafone’s specifications and support. Wider scale trials are planned for later in 2018 where up to 200 sites will be equipped with the new technology. Tests are also currently ongoing in South Africa with TIP´s OpenCellular platform for 2G and 4G services.

This OpenCellular technology is being showcased at Vodafone’s booth at Mobile World Congress 2018.

Vodafone joined the TIP board in November 2017 and is a founding member and co-chair of TIP’s Open RAN project group, which aims to develop fully programmable RAN solutions based on general purpose processing hardware and disaggregated software. TIP is an engineering-focused initiative driven by operators, suppliers, integrators and startups to disaggregate the traditional network deployment approach.

The acceleration and expansion of this collaborative trend – embodied by TIP – will lead to significant change in the telecom industry and provide the ability to connect millions of people in rural communities for the first time.

Other TIP initiatives in which Vodafone is playing a major role include:

• Vodafone is leading a TIP working group to develop a new, open version of CrowdCell. The award-winning CrowdCell technology – developed by Vodafone’s Networks Centre of Excellence in Madrid – makes networks more “localised” to deliver faster download speeds and enhance the network’s reliability. For more information: http://www.vodafone.com/content/index/what/technology-blog/crowdcell.html
• Beyond radio, Vodafone and TIP are working together with Cumulus, Zeetta Networks and the University of Bristol’s High Performance Networks Group on evolving Voyager, the industry’s first white-box transponder and routing solution. Vodafone will demonstrate Voyager’s capabilities in a trial in April.
• Vodafone is also founding a new TIP sub-group within the Open Optical & Packet Transport project group focused on transport on disaggregated cell site gateways. Similar to the gateways in radio, these would reduce the current vendor lock-in that operators face in transport networks. Cell site gateways will be also based on off-the-shelf hardware, open software and interfaces on a technology agnostic platform.

Here is a slide deck that I prepared and shared on 3G4G blog here. The part embedded below starts from Vodafone section.

Small Cells, Macrocells, Backhaul, Infrastructure and other connectivity solutions from #MWC18 from 3G4G

Happy to hear your views on TIP or Vodafone's CrowdCell announcement. Please add them as comments.