In Huawei’s home province, lychee farmers reap the benefits of China’s rural 5G push

Enhanced 5G coverage is helping farmers reach more customers through live streaming, as unpredictable weather threatens their livelihood

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Lychees on display at a farm in Zengcheng district in Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province. Photo: Handout

Published: 2:00pm, 16 Jun 2024

In the heart of an 11-acre lychee orchard, Yin Yaocheng begins his daily labour early in the morning. But unlike some of his fellow farmers, who spend the day ploughing fields or harvesting fruit, Yin films himself taking leisurely strolls among lush trees while talking into a smartphone.

Yin, the marketing head of Donglin Fruit Farm in the Zengcheng district of Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province, has been live streaming since 2022 as a way to sell produce and draw visitors to its pick-your-own fruit operation, with the help of improving 5G mobile technology that enables smoother interaction with his audience.

“Live streaming has helped us achieve business growth of 20 to 30 per cent annually since we started in 2022,” Yin told a group of reporters at the Zengcheng Lychee Live Streaming on Thursday, where a 5.5G network was being tested in a rural live-streamed broadcast for the first time. The service was powered by Huawei Technologies and China Unicom.

5.5G, which Huawei calls 5G-Advanced, is expected to bring a tenfold improvement in network performance over 5G, with peak downlink speed climbing from 1 gigabit per second to 10Gbps, and peak uplink speed rising from 100 megabits per second to 1Gbps.

The 5G cell tower enables smooth live streams in this lychee farm in the Zengcheng district of Guangzhou, capital of southern Guangdong province. Photo: Iris Deng

“The commercialisation of 5G-Advanced will support the creation of an ‘information highway’ that’s ubiquitous and fast, providing the infrastructure for an intelligent era,” said Hou Yingzhen, president of 5G marketing and solution sales at Huawei.

China Unicom, one of China’s big three telecommunications network operators, has offered farmers a 5G service package tailored for live-streaming users that gives subscribers priority in uplink speed and traffic through so-called 5G-slicing technology.