Huawei’s TECH Cares Forum Addresses Universal Service in the AI Era

Details: STAFF WRITER; Category: Vendors; 11 March 2026; 8046 views

Ubiquitous mobile broadband coverage mandated by the universal service obligation is boosting digital inclusion around the world and accelerating progress towards the UN’s sustainable development goals for 2030.

As well as being commercially driven however, networks in rural and emerging markets must also deliver clear social benefits to the communities they serve.

This was broadly the premise under discussion at Huawei’s TECH Cares Forum held earlier this month during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Representatives from the academic, regulatory and operator communities joined senior Huawei executives at the event to consider why take-up of services still lags in many regions, and what the likely impact will be in the AI era.

Presentations and discussions encompassing both urban and rural coverage networks, as well as industry ecosystems and technology developments including AI, considered how governments can accelerate user migration by developing and shaping policies to support wireless networks that are socially beneficial as well as commercially sustainable.

Setting the scene, Dr. Cosmas Zavazava, Director of the ITU’s Telecommunication Development Bureau called the digital divide “one of the defining challenges of our time”. Only if people are able to access communication networks can the life-changing opportunities for individuals, communities and entire economies offered by the AI era be realized, Dr Zavazava told the audience.

Marina Madale, Executive of Sustainability Value at MTN Group, said that whereas mobile coverage has expanded significantly in sub-Saharan Africa, participation has not advanced to the same degree, especially in rural areas. “We must step up our action to achieve digital inclusion in the AI era,” she urged.

While the commercial viability of sites can be improved by encouraging digital inclusion and driving usage, devices are the “keys to the kingdom”, said Madale, and even though smartphone penetration is accelerating it is affordability that will be crucial to drive adoption.

Promoting Connectivity and Fostering Digital Skills

According to GSMA, some 300 million people are still not covered by mobile broadband (MBB) services. Nevertheless, Yang Chaobin (pictured, main image), CEO of Huawei’s ICT Business Group announced at the event that by the end of 2025 the company had already more than made good on its pledge of 2022 to the ITU’s Partner2Connect (P2C) Digital Coalition, to provide digital connectivity to 170 million people in remote areas across more than 80 countries.

Digital skills are the key for ordinary people to enter the digital world, said Jeff Wang, President of Public Affairs and Communications at Huawei. “Inclusive connectivity and digital skills empowerment serve as the two core pillars of digital inclusion. To bridge the digital skills gap, Huawei works closely with governments and partners to enhance digital access, deliver skills training, and advance STEM education for underserved communities”

To this end, Huawei helps to promote access to better knowledge and understanding of digital services through the DigiTruck initiative, a state-of-the-art mobile digital classroom serving remote communities by providing access to knowledge, opportunities, and essential online services.

Addressing Extended Network ROI

Zeng Chuang 1200

The core challenge to developing rural coverage is the long-term return on investment (ROI) for rural networks, which can be as much as 10 years, said Zeng Chuang (pictured, above), Vice President of Huawei’s Wireless Network Product Line. This is particularly challenging in view of service providers’ responsibility to provide universal coverage.

Outlining Huawei’s competitive rural network solutions and the company’s global commercial progress, Zeng explained that high infrastructure, transmission and fuel costs combined with limited access to energy sources were exacerbating the challenges, along with lack of roads or transportation, and the scattered nature of rural communities.

Other factors in many rural areas are the limitations on tower numbers and lack of fibre optics, meaning that the only feasible technologies are often microwave or relay backhaul, said Zeng.

Huawei’s solutions which already address rural coverage include its RuralStar and RuralLink product lines. The company has recently supplemented these with RuralCow, an energy-efficient, last-mile solution for population coverage of below 3000 people, which the vendor describes as a “1 Box 1 Site” approach.

Single-day delivery and installation coupled with the use of near-line-of-sight (NLOS) transmission means that RuralCow provides fast on-air service, said Zeng, with support for services such as video calling and digital payment, helping to ensure a much-reduced ROI of around 1.5 years. He cited a recent deployment in Nigeria, where RuralCow powered by 300Ah lithium battery technology, supports GSM and LTE services.

Acknowledging that the commercial value of rural networks is “not that high”, Zeng said that providing universal coverage is nonetheless part of Huawei’s operator customers’ social responsibilities. Therefore, going forward, Huawei will continue to have more engagements with customers, try to better understand their needs in terms of technology, and strive to be more cost effective.

“We can deploy networks in (remote and rural) areas and provide a lot of social value,” said Zeng. He pointed to economic and business models based on mobile connections that have already boosted the development of services such as e-commerce in China, and also the prosperity of the food delivery economy in China, Asia and other parts of the world.

“Right now in China, countries in Asia Pacific and in Africa, we also see the development of mobile connections which have contributed to the boom in online sales,” Zeng added. “For example, in many rural areas there are a lot of difficulties in transportation. Now thanks to this new technology farmers are able to sell their products into other areas and in cities so I think this technology has worked out to have many social values as well.”

Boosting Rural Services in the Mobile AI Era

The biggest challenge of providing universal service in the Mobile AI era is to lower the cost of technology, said Zeng. “This is actually a common concern faced by the whole world, but it’s especially acute in regions like Africa, Latin America, and Asia Pacific,”

At the equipment or physical layer, intelligent algorithms can reduce inefficiencies so allowing systems to be pushed closer to their limits in terms of things like capacity and balanced coverage, Zeng explained. And by enabling troubleshooting, intelligent algorithms can also improve the air interface transmission efficiency, and broaden coverage.

In rural networks especially, the big headache is about the operations and maintenance (O&M) costs, and intelligent algorithms can help to reduce these and also be applied in the network operations centre (NOC), said Zeng. Intelligent algorithms can also help save energy, fix problems and locate faults in a shorter space of time.

Mobile AI has also got a lot of challenges, said Zeng. “Mobile AI Application requires very good connections, especially in areas such as agent to agent communications. Latency needs to be very low and we need to have large bandwidth, especially in the uplink. Enlarging the uplink bandwidth in the Mobile AI era has already become an industry consensus.”

This in turn will impact network design, said Zeng. “At Huawei we’re adapting our designs to make our products more reliable.”

Power supply has also been a challenge in many rural areas, said Zeng. We can do things such as reduce the power consumption and make designs more simplified.

Redressing the Global Imbalance

“At the same time we have also noticed that there’s a severe imbalance between the BRIC countries and the regions,” says Zeng. “For example, in Asia Pacific the connection rate may be more than 90%, while in Africa the connection rate is nearer 30% or less. So apart from technology we also need to leverage funding to boost expansion and coverage.”

“I think we can try to better understand our customers’ needs in technology and continue to innovate, to provide solutions to help them, and in this way we can narrow the gap. In this way they will both have the willingness and the capability to deploy more services.”