Huawei and China Mobile built the world's highest 5G network, commemorating the anniversary of two major Chinese milestones in mountaineering.
Five 5G AAU base stations were built on the mountain at its Base, Transition and Forward Camps at 5,300, 5,800 and 6,500 metres above sea level, respectively.
The base stations aim to demonstrate the efficacy of Huawei's compact and integrated access points, with the Chinese tech firm announcing its base stations can offer 20 times the networking capacity while being three times smaller than a traditional ones.
— Zain Malik🇵🇰 (@izainmanzoor) May 4, 2020
The stations will offer download speeds of over 1.7Gbps (1,700 megabytes) and upload speeds of 215Mbps, even at 6,500 metres above sea level, and will be used to measure Mount Everest along with several specialists stationed on the mountain.
Compact base stations reduce the time and work needed for installations, with smaller footprints boosting the number of sites in an area. The technologies enhance speeds via its massive multi input, multi output (MIMO) technology, increasing speed and capacity by monitoring users per base station and using beamforming, which transmits data directly to each device.
According to a press release, such advancements allow cheaper, faster installations for building networks across numerous regions, including urban and harsh environments.
The news comes 60 years after mountaineers first climbed the world's tallest mountain at its north ridge and 45 years after the first official and accurate measurement of the summit.
The announcement comes nearly a decade after Huawei installed the world's highest GSM network at 5200m above sea level.
— Huawei (@Huawei) August 26, 2010
The company said in a statement: "Huawei strongly believes that technology means to make the world better. The beauty of Mount Everest can be displayed via 5G high-definition video and VR experience, which also provides further insights for mountaineers, scientists and other specialists into the nature. The ground-breaking establishment on Mount Everest once again proves that 5G technology connect Mankind and the Earth harmoniously".
The news comes amid the US trade war on China, where Washington placed Huawei, ZTE and over 70 Chinese tech firms on an Entity List in May last year, citing national security concerns and allegations that such companies could be used to spy for the Chinese government. Both Huawei and Beijing have sharply and repeatedly denied the accusations and have demanded US officials to provide evidence to support its claim, which to date has not been submitted.
