Salamanca, 6 September 2022 

During the "Startup Olé Salamanca 2022" event, Huawei has today reiterated its continuous support for addressing the rural-urban gap in Europe. In the context of the New European Innovation Agenda launched by the European Commission, Huawei has committed to become one of the partners for implementation. 

Tony Jin Yong, Huawei Chief Representative to the EU Institutions, said: "With R&D at our heart, and our determination to leave no one behind in the digital era, we fully support the New European Innovation Agenda. Huawei has more than 230 cooperations with European universities for research innovation, and meanwhile we work with more than 150 European universities for talent cultivation. Rural areas are core to the European way of life, but they have been challenged by socioeconomic and demographic trends like depopulation. That is why I want to congratulate Startup Olé, the University of Salamanca and the European Commission for this successful European Startup Villages initiative".

Huawei is committed to facilitating the implementation of the flagship actions identified by the New European Innovation Agenda by 2030.

As part of its European Startup Villages pledge, Huawei has rewarded nine European villages with the goal to set-up innovative co-working spaces and attract innovative businesses. The Huawei pledge has two aims: first to set up innovative co-working spaces to attract businesses to these villages; second, to issue a study about the challenges faced by rural innovation and entrepreneurship, provide solutions for rural areas to be able to attract innovative projects and pull more investments.

Huawei believes that many European villages have the potential to become hubs for creative innovation. To improve remote connectivity, in the past five years Huawei has allocated 1,500 engineers to work on rural solutions, like AirPon for FTTH, Fixed Wireless Access enabled by 5G, and the Rural Star platform. Thanks to innovation, reducing total costs by 30% and deployment time by 80%, Huawei has made it much easier for operators to provide independent communication in villages as small as five hundred people. Building connectivity infrastructure is only the first step to transform villages into "regional innovation valleys", as foreseen in the NEIA. For the next steps, Huawei provides industry applications to strengthen innovation systems and to better connect innovation players, including in regions lagging behind – in cooperation with local partners. Mastering digital transformation is one of the most important challenges facing Europe; which is exactly Huawei's expertise.

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Jakub Hera­ Adamowicz

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jakub.hera.adamowicz@huawei.com