5.5G Boosts Live-Streaming Sales for Chinese Fruit Farmers

In the province where Huawei’s headquarters is located, lychee growers are benefiting from China’s promotion of 5G in rural areas. Yin Yaocheng starts working early every morning in a lychee orchard covering about 66 mu (4.4 hectares). But unlike some farmers who spend all day tilling or picking fruit, he leisurely strolls through the lush orchard while chatting on a smartphone. As the operations director of Donglin Fruit Farm in Guangzhou’s Zengcheng District, he has been live-streaming since 2022 to sell agricultural products and attract tourists to pick fruit, thanks to the improving 5G mobile communication technology that enables smoother interaction with his audience.

“Since we started live-streaming in 2022, it has helped our business grow by 20% to 30% each year,” Yin said during a live-stream event on June 13 in Zengcheng, Guangzhou, where the 5.5G network was tested for the first time in a rural live-streaming setting. The service was jointly provided by Huawei and China Unicom Guangdong. Dubbed “5G-A” by Huawei, 5.5G delivers network performance equivalent to 10 times that of 5G, increasing the downlink peak rate from 1Gbps to 10Gbps and the uplink peak rate from 100Mbps to 1Gbps.

“The commercialization of 5G-A will further support the ubiquitous, broad, and fast ‘information highway’ to build the network infrastructure for the intelligent era,” said Hou Yingzhen, president of 5G Marketing and Solution Sales at Huawei. China Unicom provides tailored 5G services for live-streaming users to farmers.

Yin said the enhanced 5G network allows him to live-stream with better video quality in more areas of the orchard. In the past, he had to stay in one spot with the strongest signal. “With this technology, we can better showcase these details to the audience through live-streaming and ultimately improve sales conversion,” he said.

Live-streaming e-commerce is becoming an increasingly popular channel for Chinese fruit farmers to promote their products, especially for seasonal produce with short growing periods. However, 5G infrastructure in rural areas faces some unique challenges. According to Wang Liang, deputy general manager of the Product Innovation Center at China Unicom Guangdong, the cost of building 5G networks in rural areas is higher because the infrastructure is more spatially dispersed compared to cities. Nevertheless, he said China has been pushing to upgrade digital infrastructure in rural areas in recent years to enhance agricultural production and sales activities.