Huawei brings 5G to fishing boats

Recently, China Unicom Guangdong and the 5G Huawei “Digital Fishing Boat” project won the 2023 GSMA “5G Productivity Challenge Award” by installing 5G to fishing boats for various use cases.

This achievement includes efforts of the two companies to jointly create new 5G technologies, build a 5G operation ecosystem, and promote industrial digitalization through the “5G Fast City” while ensuring the growth of 5G applications.

David Pringle, a GSMA judge and a senior analyst at Pringle Media, pointed out: “On the more than 450 kilometers of coastline in Yangjiang City, Guangdong Province, 5G is completely changing the lives of fishermen, allowing them to keep abreast of weather conditions, sell fish and other products when they go fishing. Stay connected with your family. Guangdong Unicom’s digital fishing boat system has provided services for more than 4,000 fishing boats, and it can also assist the local fishery administration to mitigate the impact of typhoons and combat illegal fishing operations.”

Guangdong Unicom and Huawei used China Unicom’s 5G private network PLUS product system to develop the 5G digital fishing boats system.

Using 5G, cloud computing, the Internet of Things, and Beidou positioning technologies, it can realize all-weather dynamic monitoring of fishing boats’ offshore operations. Through the 5G MetaAAU ultra-large-scale antenna array, the system gives full play to the advantages of the large bandwidth of the 3.5G frequency band, and can still maintain the access capability of 60Mbps downlink and 2Mbps uplink in the 61km far sea range.

On the “digital fishing boat”, fishermen can not only watch the news, but also keep abreast of weather warnings and other information, and make high-definition video calls with their families. In the event of an emergency on the fishing boat, fishermen can call for help with one click through the app and get assistance in time. Fishermen can also use the app to link to major e-commerce platforms and sell seafood products across the country through e-commerce channels.

Guangdong Unicom plans to further promote the digital fishing boat system and provide related services for 40,000 to 50,000 fishing boats in Guangdong Province. At the same time, Guangdong Unicom and Huawei also plan to carry out innovative cooperation with industrial partners in the fields of offshore wind power, offshore pastures, and island tourism through the “5G Fast City”.